China Spurs Digital Ad Growth in Asia-Pacific As Paid Search Numbers Reflect Increased Investment

The Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region has proven itself as a dominant force in digital advertising with spend projected to exceed $39 billion this year.  In 2012, APJ surpassed Western Europe to become the second-largest digital ad market in the world.

Within the region, China is one of the standout countries. Skai’s analysis of Q4 Global Search Trends indicate that overall paid search spend in China was up 31% in Q4 2013, as compared to the previous quarter.

The growing Chinese digital advertising market is projected to reach nearly $16 Billion this year. On the consumer side, China boosts the world’s largest internet user population with over 620M users reported in 2013 – and that’s with only 46% penetration of the country’s population!

Baidu dominates paid search landscape

In China, Baidu is the largest search engine with the greatest market share. As of Q2 2013, Baidu accounted for 78.6% of the total search revenue share in China, putting it leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

Over the course of 2013, Skai clients expanded their investment in China, spending 67% more on Baidu in December 2013 than seen in January 2013.

As their ad spend on Baidu increased, Skai clients benefited from improvements in key metrics including increases across the board for volume of clicks and impressions as well as number of conversions. Meanwhile, CPCs on Baidu maintained fairly steady with the 2013 average coming in at $0.26 (converted to USD).  These findings are in line with Q4 trends highlighted in Skai’s Global Search Trends research for the APJ region as clicks and impressions grew 6.5% and 2.3% quarter-over-quarter respectively in APJ.

Skai has continued to invest in the growth of APJ as the region represents one of the strongest digital advertising markets and will continue to scale in the coming years. For more insights, please view the infographic highlighting Q4 paid search performance in APJ and China. To learn more about Skai in China, please visit Kenshoo.com/China.

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