Hot off the acquisition of Upstream Asia, Bite Beijing served as public relations partner for this week’s ad:tech Beijing 2009.
The show was chock full of bilingual panels, pundits and predictions about digital marketing and social media in China. Here are some quick highlights and takeaways from the two day ad:tech event:
- There are more than 338 million Internet users in China. If that were a country it would be the equal to the entire US population plus Peru thrown in for good measure!
- 320 million people have broadband
- 75% of Chinese people are still NOT online. When you compare that to the US where 25% are not online, there’s still lots of growth left
- The most popular social sites in China are QQ School Friends, RenRen (formerly Xiaonei) and Sina Space
- Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China (except for the few who use international proxy servers)
- 2nd and 3rd tier cities now get trends as fast as tier 1 cities thanks to the web, says Jigsaw Media’s trend spotter PT Black
- 42% of Chinese netizens are in rural areas and many of them buy their Converse sneakers online
- Another trend highlighted by PT Black is the spread of the Martian language, a cryptic jumbling of Chinese and western characters that separates the cool online users from outsiders
- Philippe Lamy of L’Oreal China mused about the role of “Little Emperors,” demanding consumers created by China’s one child policy, and shared L’Oreal’s lessons learned from building communities online
- Pepsi’s Harry Hui (China’s Simon Cowell) gave this sound advice learned from their music marketing campaigns: there are lots of cool web and social media opportunities out there but the “Idea has to be strong first” like Pepsi’s nationwide “Battle of the Bands”
For more data and insights on Internet and mobile trends in China and the rest of the Asia Pacific region, download the free Asia Digital Marketing Association’s Yearbook 2009.
See you at next year’s ad:tech – who knows how much China’s Internet will have progressed by then!
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