In general, the reason Baidu PPC advertising can be highly effective is the fact that users who are actively searching for something already have a buying intent. It means that they are more likely to convert, in other words to become the actual customers compared to those who are passively looking at ads or are still in the process of discovery of a specific product or service.

Baidu PPC advertising is, in principal, identical to Google’s equivalent, although there are several important differences to keep in mind. First of all, due to the fact that Chinese internet is tightly controlled and regulated by the government, opening a PPC account is, by far, more complicated process than with Google.

In contrast to Google AdWords account which is free and only asks for a Gmail account and a credit card, Baidu requires some serious paperwork, a fee and a deposit to get it going.

Currently, only legally registered companies, domestic or foreign, can advertise with Baidu. Obviously, opening Baidu PPC advertising account for a Chinese company is much easier than for a foreign one, it is also cheaper and faster. Overseas business entities are required to provide business registration certificate at the minimum and are often asked to submit additional documentation. This is why it is recommended to enlist a help of professionals who are experienced in dealing with Baidu on behalf of a foreign company.

Once the account has been registered and activated, it operates in a similar way with Google, although the back end interface is entirely in Chinese. In addition, the structure is significantly more confusing and takes some time getting used to. Once again, even if you are fluent in Chinese, it is always a good idea to outsource Baidu account management to someone who is well familiar with it instead of attempting to do it yourself.

Baidu PPC advertising with search ads

On the most basic level, there are two sections in Baidu account: search ads and display ads. Search ads are those that are displayed on search results pages in response to user query. In Baidu, they come in a few different formats.

The most basic format is a text ad complete with a title, two lines of description and URL at the bottom – quite similar to Google. There is also a verification level assigned to an ad which is designed to inform users on trustworthiness of a particular website and an advertiser.

Some text ads can also include additional links to separate landing pages. By offering several options, such arrangement increases likelihood of that ad being clicked, although this format is more expensive.

Baidu brand zone

Baidu Brand Zone is another option that is most suitable for businesses looking to build brand awareness rather than achieve direct conversions. This type of ads typically include images, text and multiple links. Such ads are CPM (cost per mille/1000 impressions) based and therefore harder to measure. The price for such ads depends on their size and the position making the advertising in Baidu Brand Zone to be the most expensive type of Baidu marketing.

Using images with Baidu PPC advertising

In general, in order to increase the CTR (click through rate) advertisers would try to include images in the ads whenever possible as well pack more links into an ad. Carefully designed text that fits well with dynamic keywords (those that show up in response to the relevant query) is another important factor to consider. This is where A/B split tests come handy and, fortunately, Baidu offers unlimited ways to test and fine tune the best performing combinations.

Another good reason to include images with the ads is the fact that more users, especially on mobile, use pictures to search for products. Baidu’s picture matching algorithms continue improving offering more opportunities to display matching ads.

Baidu PPC advertising for mobile

Mobile search is another major area of Baidu strength where it holds even larger market share than on desktops. Optimizing ads for mobile involves setting up a call button that dials the number automatically by user simply tapping it from their phones. It works in both mobile browser and Baidu app.

If the business is particularly interested in reaching mobile users, it is worth investing in creating mobile friendly ads with suitable images and shorter, more concise text.

Baidu display ads

Display ads is the second major method to advertise with Baidu. It involves placing image ads (banners) at the most relevant sites that are part of vast Baidu ads display network. This is what is often called remarketing (or retargeting) – the ads are displayed based on a specific user’s history of visiting sites or searching for a particular term.

Technically, it is identical to a much larger Google’s ads display network, which, like many other things, has been copied by Baidu.
Both search ads and display ads are managed within the same Baidu PPC account sharing advertising budget that can be split between the two methods.

Typically, it is hard to predict in advance which PPC method would bring better results, therefore you should expect it to take some time to determine how to best allocate the budget between search and display ads.

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Moreover, Baidu is also the leading choice for searches on mobile devices, the increasingly important Chinese search engines market. In June 2016, it was reported that Baidu had 667 million monthly active users (MAU) just for that month alone.

Baidu is still the leader of Chinese search engines market

The entire Chinese search engines market has been growing at fairly steady rate since 2010, adding each year somewhere between 50 and 70 million new users. This year, it is estimated to have reached about 600 million regular users, about 3 quarters of which go to Baidu as their service of choice.

In many ways, Baidu has been following, if not copying, Google’s business strategy. It has diversified its business into areas that are identical to Google’s: from navigation and self-driving cars to AI (artificial intelligence) and VR (virtual reality).

Although, it did hit a few bumps on the road, such as recent scandals with its medical ads and illegal promotions of gambling sites, it is hard to imagine Baidu being knocked off its primary position among Chinese search engines any time soon.

The other Chinese search engines that are worth mentioning are Qihoo (aka Search360) and Sogou. Qihoo in particular has been growing relatively fast in recent years and was the only one that was ever in a position to somewhat threaten Baidu’s dominance in Chinese search engines market, although it is no longer the case.

When it comes to advertising, Baidu should always be considered as the first choice, mainly because of its largest reach. On average, Baidu CPC (cost per click) tends to be higher than Google across almost all industries. Most likely, it will continue to increase as Baidu has been experiencing fall in profits and will probably increase prices as time goes by.

Another reason to focus on Baidu is the fact that its technology is the most advanced. This ultimately affects advertisement CTR (click through rate) through higher relevancy with the search terms.

Baidu has also been active in the video market and currently owns one of the largest online video hosting platforms called iQiYi. As videos are quickly becoming one of the most popular types of content consumed online, Baidu is in a good position to take advantage of that market as well.

In addition, Baidu, like Google, is very good at remarketing which is built into its display network with over 600,000 partner websites in China. Managing both search ads and display ads is done within the same Baidu advertising account where user can simply split the budget between the two channels.

One of the biggest hustles associated with Baidu PPC is opening the advertising account. Unless your company has Chinese business registration, applying for Baidu account involves quite a bit of paperwork and a long verification process. Baidu would typically request translated version of your foreign business license and may require additional proof of incorporation. Companies in financial and medical fields would most certainly be scrutinized more carefully and multiple requests for additional licenses are quite common.

Verification of a website (which must be in Chinese) often leads to more requests to change certain sections (most commonly “about us” part). All this is aimed at making sure that the advertiser is not misrepresenting its business nature and is a legitimate company which will not become involved in promoting anything illegal.

This process is in sharp contrast with Google’s where anyone with a Gmail and a credit card can open an account and start running campaigns almost immediately.

The situation is not that much different with the other Chinese search engines such as Qihoo and Sogou. They also require business registration and licenses from foreign applicants and must follow similar verification process. Once approved, running PPC campaign with those engines is quite similar to Baidu. On the positive side, for businesses that are not in very competitive niches, CPC on Qihoo and Sogou can be substantially lower compared to Baidu. Therefore, it is a good idea to try those engines as well in parallel, although not instead of, Baidu.

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Being a worldwide industry problem, China’s digital advertising market seems to be one of the worst affected ones. Chinese  internet is the second most popular advertising media after television and was estimated at $55.48 billion by the end of 2018 according to China Daily. Unfortunately, advertisers’ losses could account for up to third of that amount, mostly lost to non-human traffic and fraudulent CTR (click through rate).

The report by Miaozhen Systems, released about a year ago, claims that auto and telecommunications were hit the worst with up to a third of the traffic being non-human, i.e. generated by bots and crawlers, while food & drink and the fast moving consumer products industry saw the lowest rate at 8.52% and 11.88% respectively.

…many local computers still run on Windows XP that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Bots can infect such machines much easier and, in fact, a proportionally larger share of fraudulent traffic seems to be coming from lower tier cities where more people still use older Windows OS.

How do the losses occur exactly? A small piece of malicious software, a “bot”, is placed on a host computer from which it visits various sites in the background without user noticing anything abnormal with their machine. It’s even harder to spot for advertisers because it shares the real user’s unique “cookie” identifier.

Other pieces of software can stack hundreds of ads on top of each other on a website, or place the entire website into a small pixel on a page. This way, it would seem that a particular ad was displayed while, in fact, it was never seen by a visitor.

CPC (cost per click) ads are also affected as such bots can be smart enough to mix real clicks with the “fake” ones, making it harder to identify as a non-human activity.

There are number of reasons why China is one of the worst affected markets. First, many local computers still run on Windows XP that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Bots can infect such machines much easier and, in fact, a proportionally larger share of fraudulent traffic seems to be coming from lower tier cities where more people still use older Windows OS.

Second, not all the fake traffic is caused by bots, some is accounted for search engine crawlers. Since search engine market in China is much more fragmented than in the West, there are simply more crawlers visiting each site.

A third reason that is also specific to China is the fact that many people would willingly install special traffic software on their systems in order to attract more followers to their social media profiles, making their social activity appear more popular. However, such programs would do many other things without user’s knowledge or consent, effectively plugging such computer into a larger bot network.

Lastly, there is a lack of habit and willingness to go after the offenders and many in the industry still consider this problem to be the necessary evil that nothing much can be done about. Although, there is a technology in place to combat the problem, its adoption in China has been slow.

A new alarming trend is the increasing proliferation of online fraud in the growing mobile space. Android is by far the most popular mobile OS in China but the official Google Play store is not the usual place to go for apps. Most people would go to many smaller apps market which exercise very little control over quality.

While, at the moment, most non-human traffic in China is still PC based, it is reasonable to assume that with more people using Android devices to access internet, the worst of mobile advertising fraud is yet to come.

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In this post, we are going to review the primary routes for promotion and advertising on Sina Weibo. There are three basic ways to promote a brand on Weibo:

• Weibo Fans headlines (粉丝头条)
• Weibo Fans pass (粉丝通)
• Weibo Micro task (微任务)

Weibo Fans Headlines

This is the simplest way to promote a post by pushing it to the top of followers’ feed. At present, Weibo charges 2.37 RMB per post to be displayed above others in the feed for 24 hours. There is 40% discount for any posts that mention anything related to Weibo itself.

Making a post more prominently displayed can be an effective way to attract clicks from brand followers by having them notice the content as soon as they log in. The obvious disadvantage is the fact that it only improves your content’s visibility with your existing followers and does little to acquire new ones. On the other hand, the price for this type of promotion is fairly affordable.

Fans Pass

This type of promotion involves an ad campaign and can be initiated and managed with an ad account. The ad account opening process requires local ID and usually takes about 3 days to complete the approval process.

There are two pricing models: CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPE (cost per engagement) which are determined by automated bidding process, similar to the familiar Google Adwords.

CPM prices start at 5 RMB per CPM and can be increased by bidding up with 0.1 RMB increments.

“E” in CPE type of Weibo advertising stands for “engagement” that can be either click, a forward, a like or a follow. The initial price is set to minimum 0.5 RMB per CPE and can be increased at 0.01 RMB increment. The final price will be ultimately determined by quality of the content and competitive offers. If the price is set too low and the content is not engaging enough, the ad may not receive enough exposure, so setting the right bid and making adjustment to the content takes a bit of tweaking.

Weibo ad account provides some analytics tool to judge the effectiveness of an ad campaign but finding the right combination of all the parameters takes some skills and experience.

Micro task

The third type of promotion, which is also unique to Weibo, is called Micro Task and involves engaging KOLs, or Key Opinion Leaders.

KOLs are basically people with a lot of followers and are considered to be authority figures in their areas of expertise. Some KOLs have millions of followers which enables them to broadcast a targeted message to a very large audiences.

Depending on a specific industry, Weibo offers a range of KOLs to choose from. Typically, those with the largest following are more expensive to engage.

Working with KOLs requires opening an account and paying a deposit that is currently set to 2,000 RMB for companies. Once a suitable KOL is chosen, you can set a task (hence the name of this feature – “micro-task”) that normally involves posting your content in KOLs account that should appear at the time of your choosing and remain visible for a set period.

Depending on a specific KOL and the type of promotion task he/she receives, the price is set by Weibo automatically.

Individuals (as opposed to companies) can also use micro-task to promote posts. There is no deposit for individual account and you pay as you go per each task. On the other hand, individuals can’t pick KOLs that will be assigned by Weibo automatically.

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First, let start with the definition of – a landing page (or LP) is where your potential customer “lands” first after clicking your link in the search results, social media or an email. Making sure that landing page design is clear, focused and the content is easy to understand is the key in converting visitors to customers.

Before we look at the specific guidelines that are relevant to building a Chinese landing page, let’s make sure that the general page structure follows best practices applicable to all types of landing pages.

Let’s start off with a quick rundown of those guidelines that are applicable to all types of landing pages:

• Having clear and concise headline up top
• Strategic placement of a large and distinctive CTA (call to action) button
• Using interesting and visually appealing images
• Making sure that the main text clearly explains the offer and is going from general to detailed description as the reader moves down the page

Now, let’s list the specific requirements for Chinese landing pages along with the common mistakes that companies often make in creating them:

Chinese landing page design: do’s and don’ts

#1 Use native translation

While using native translation should be the obvious rule, a surprising number of foreign companies still cut corners on this one. Re-purposing original landing pages for Chinese market by using machine translated text or simply relying on low-quality translations would make such landing pages completely useless and counterproductive.

Always use a professional translator to write proper copy for your Chinese landing pages and make sure that they are proofread by native Mandarin speakers.

#2 Remove links to blocked social media

While re-purposing landing pages for Chinese market, many companies forget to remove standard links to their social media accounts that are inaccessible in China anyway. Not only those Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram links will appear broken and wouldn’t even display an icon, they will significantly slow down Chinese landing page loading time.

Ideally, a page loading time should not exceed 5 seconds, although that is often hard to achieve with overseas hosting (more on it below)

#3 Optimize your Chinese landing page loading time

Loading time is almost always an issue for sites hosted outside of China. As long as your company doesn’t have a local business registration – hosting in China is not permitted. The next best option would be to get a hosting in Hong Kong. Some Hong Kong based hosting providers would often advertise “fast China route” options without physically having to host on the Mainland’s servers.

Alibaba Cloud is a popular hosting solution that is cheap and easy to sign up for. However, make sure that you select Hong Kong based servers when buying their hosting package.

#4 Embed videos from local platforms

It is often a good choice to have embedded videos on a landing page, however, if it is a YouTube one – it won’t work in China (YouTube is one of the blocked sites).

The solution is to setup an account on YouKu, Chinese YouTube equivalent, upload your video there and link to it from your Chinese landing page. There is one caveat here however – the video will be preceded by an advertisement and those are notoriously long and can even run for up to 90 seconds. The only way to play videos without pre-roll ads is to sign up for a paid YouKu account. Although not cheap (currently RMB 5,000 per year), it would make sense to purchase if you are planning to host more videos on the platform in the future.

The last tip about the videos – if they are in English, make sure to either provide a Chinese voiceover or, at the very minimum, Chinese subtitles.

#5 Integrate share buttons and links to Chinese social media

If you already have Chinese social media presence on Weibo, YouKu, WeChat or other platforms, make sure to include links to those sites on your Chinese landing page or, in the case of WeChat, display official account’s QR code. This will not only demonstrate to your visitors that you have an established local presence but will also help in getting more followers to your Chinese social media channels.

In case you didn’t yet setup those social media account in China, at least include sharing buttons to Weibo and WeChat.

#6 Localize the contact form

If your Chinese landing page is designed for collecting users’ data, make sure that the contact form is properly translated to Chinese and don’t leave any English field names to avoid confusion.

Also, keep in mind that while your English form may have separate fields for first and last names, Chinese equivalent would typically use just one name field for both the surname (one character) and the given name (one or two characters).

#7 Optimize for mobile

Mobile optimization of a landing page is extremely important for Chinese market as most traffic will come from mobile devices. It’s essential to use responsive design for your Chinese landing page ensuring that it displays correctly on most type of mobile screens.

Once the landing page is displayed on a small mobile screen, it is critical to make sure that most relevant information such as the headline and CTA (call to action) shows up “above the fold” rather than relying on users to scroll down the page.

#8 Test, test, test

Finally, your Chinese landing page is ready to go live and now you can just sit back and relax. If only that was true… The fact is that you can never be 100% sure that your page works correctly unless you, or someone else on your behalf, would test it from within China.

Although, there are some online tools available to test loading speed and accessibility of sites in China, they cannot be relied on completely as they wouldn’t show common display problems, broken links or other errors. Therefore, it is best to have someone to test your Chinese landing page in China using inspector browser option (F12 hotkey in most browsers) to note and record any errors and loading time.

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Recent statistics show that there were about 430 million online video users in China and this number has been steadily growing at the annual rate of between 12 to 15% since 2007:

Given such enormous reach and, traditionally, high degree of video consumers’ engagement, advertising on this platform could be highly effective. In fact, according to Youku’s recent financial report, nearly 90% of its revenue comes from selling ads.

On the other hands, advertising on Youku is significantly different from YouTube in several key aspects. In this post, I’m going to review different advertising options with Youku.

More about brand advertising, less about direct marketing

Although some targeted advertising is available with Youku, the options are quite limited. As opposed to Youtube, the platform seems to be unable to target specific users based on their preferences or browsing history. Instead, Youku is still focused on blanket advertising by pursuing the largest possible audience, similar to traditional media such as TV or newspapers.

There is an inherent disadvantage of such approach: displaying Porsche ad to a student or a soccer mom would be a complete waste of Porsche’s advertising dollars (not that we’d feel too sorry for them anyway…). It’s reasonable to assume that Youku is working on smarter ways to display ads but, unfortunately to marketers, it isn’t there just yet.

Youku does offer a lucrative opportunity to reach extremely large audience but it doesn’t come cheap. Also, lack of focus on direct marketing makes Youku platform less suitable for companies seeking to focus on a specific audience.

Limited value of the analytics

Just as with Youtube, Youku makes basic analytics available to its customers. The data includes viewers’ demographics, geolocation, browsing technology, language, operating systems etc. As mentioned above, since the targeting options are not yet well developed, the practical value of such statistics has its limitations. It seems that Youku does know how to display ads relevant to what a viewer is presently watching but can’t show them based on recent browsing history – something that Youtube or Google’s Adsense does quite well.

Great multitude of ad options

The ads can be displayed in various shapes and forms: from videos to banners which can be both static or animated, as well as text links and buttons. Those are often referred to as “hard advertising”. Other forms include product placements in in-house produced content, or branded viral videos all of which are collectively known as “soft advertising”.

The price depends on the type of an ad, where and how it is displayed, and what scheme is chosen by a client. The most expensive ads are the ones that are displayed near the top of the page and those that are larger in size as opposed to smaller ones or those that are visible only after scrolling.

For big spenders only

Advertising prices didn’t see significant changes since 2012 and they vary wildly depending on the type of ads.

There are three basic schemes:

• CPM (cost per thousand impressions)
• banners in various locations on the site
• ads displayed with the video being watched which could be pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll as well as pause ads.

Here is an example of the list prices (in RMB) for pre-roll CPM ads which are based on the IP address location and the length:

These are the list prices for for banner ads (Youku does offer volume discounts):

The actual price list of Youku ads choices is obviously much more elaborate and contains a few dozen different models, however, clearly, there are no low budget options here.

Who are the typical advertisers?

According to Youku, the vast majority of the advertisers are producers of the fast-moving consumer goods (~50%); IT services and telecoms (~20%); internet services (~10%) with the rest of the 20% spread between automotive companies, financial services and some others. Youku works with fairly large number of globally-recognized companies such as P&G, Coca-cola, General Motors, Apple as well as local heavyweights like China Mobile, e-commerce company Jingdong.com, food company Yum! etc.

In conclusion, Youku does offer a lucrative opportunity to reach extremely large audience but it doesn’t come cheap. Also, lack of focus on direct marketing makes Youku platform less suitable for companies seeking to focus on a specific audience. On the other hand, advertisers that could benefit less from accurate targeting, fast food chains for example, can see their advertising dollars well spent by using Youku platform.

In the next post, I’ll get into some more details on various advertising and ad display options with Youku. Stay tuned.

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The main attributes of various types of ads running on Youku site is the ad’s location, size, frequency and media type. Prices are based on the combination of those attributes and range between  30 RMB per thousand impressions for a 15 seconds pre-roll ad with CPM model  to 250,000 RMB for 24 hours of displaying the largest banner ad on the top of the page.

Here are the most common types of advertising on Youku:

Youku top banner ads

Banner ads can be displayed at the top, the middle or at the bottom of a page, as well as on the right panel’s top or bottom. Here is an example of the top page and top side panel’s banner ads:

Youku mid-page banner ads

Getting to the middle page banner takes a bit of scrolling down and it looks like this:

Youku bottom banner ads

Finally, the cheapest (relatively speaking) are the bottom banners that wouldn’t be visible until a user scrolls all the way down:

Youku pre-roll ads

Those are the ads that are displayed before the start of a video and they can’t be skipped:

Youku mid and post-roll ads

Finally, mid and post-roll ads are displayed during the video at certain times or at the end of it, similar to TV commercials. Since they can be skipped by a viewer they will be priced at much lower rate than pre-roll ones.

Here is an example of a post-roll ad that is displayed upon the end of a clip and will stay on until closed:

Youku pause ads

Pause ads is anther popular choice of adverting on Youku. Those ads are displayed whenever a video is paused. Such ad would stay on until playback is resumed. Those types of ads are usually static but can be quite effective – if the video is paused several times, a viewer will be seeing it every time which increases the impression rate per the same user.

Here is how a pause ad would look like:

Moreover, there is a nice feature of Youku that keeps a small floating frame of the video in constant view every time the page is scrolled down. This means that whenever a clip is paused, a pause ad will stay in view no matter where a user is on the page. Here is how that would look like:

In conclusion, advertising options on Youku although similar to Youtube, are in some ways more versatile and creative. This, however, does make pages look more cluttered and disorganized. On the other hand, Chinese consumers generally don’t consider such apparent clutter a distraction and, in fact, do prefer busy look of sites like Youku to clean and minimalist style that is more effective with Western consumers. Read here more on this particular topic.

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Also, the type of banners ads  that are considered to be more effective in China tend to be flashier and more animated, something that Western users typically find most annoying.

According to polling by iResearch China, the ad’s relevancy is the most important factor in user’s decision to click it (36.5% indicated that as the main factor), followed by the quality of the copy (34%).

32.5% of respondents indicated that promotional info, such as discounts, coupons or attractive pricing prompted their clicks. Finally, great visuals and sound effects is what attracts 31.4% of people.

Much less visitors were clicking an ad based on frequency – only 15.3% clicked an ad because they have seen it multiple times. However, that is still a fairly high number that makes retargeting (remarketing) a highly effective strategy for serving banner ads in China.

Different types of banner ads in China and their effectiveness

Banners on ecommerce sites

According to various data, banner ads on Chinese ecommerce sites are, by far, the most effective. According to iResearch, nearly 8 in 10 users paid attention to those ads and over 60% of users routinely click them. Since such advertising is often highly relevant to users who are searching for specific products, those results are not surprising.

Banners on portals and search engines

Over 70% would notice ads on portals and search engines and over half would click them which makes it the next best channel for placing banners ads in China after ecommerce sites. Such high numbers are explained by the fact that there is a higher degree of intent and interest on the part people who are searching for a specific term or visit specialized websites.

Banners on video sites

Although about 70% of visitors to video sites like Youku or PPTV notice the ads, they are the most disliked types of banners ads in China. Another research from Tencent Penguin Intelligence found that the majority of internet users aged between 16 to 20 did not watch video ads, and 11.6% even said they were “intolerable.” These types of ads are mostly disliked on mobile. With the typical length of a pre-roll ad on Youku being about 1 minute, those finding are hardly surprising.

Banners on social media sites

In general, banner advertising on social media sites such as Weibo is often considered ineffective. Another research by Kantar, discovered that a dismal 13% of visitors on those sites liked such ads while while 24.2% said they were put off by them with 42.1% simply ignoring them. In our experience, post boosts work much better in social media due to their higher relevancy to users’ interests.

Mobile banner ads

Mobile ads is the fastest growing sector which offers the most potential. New mobile ads networks are improving efficiency, although the industry is still in the experimentation stage. Many networks are still looking for the best ways to monetize and the prices may vary widely. One of the biggest problems with mobile ads is the fact that they often get clicks by accident. This, in part, is caused by limited “real estate” of the small mobile phone screens. On the other hand, larger smartphones and “phablets” offer more potential.

Ads on gaming sites

The biggest problem with these type of banner ads in China is the relevancy – it is hard to figure out precisely who would be interested in checking out the latest fast food restaurant offer while playing a game. Even though the marketing reach with gaming ads can be quite large, CTR is often low. Most effective banner ads on gaming sites and mobile games often feature new games and related apps installs rather than unrelated or broad subjects.

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Here are the six most common types of ad fraud in China:

Bot traffic

Bots are small programs that usually reside on unsuspecting users’ computers and can imitate a behavior or real users. Bots can visit websites and click on links just like humans. In fact, bots are responsible for the large proportion of traffic on the internet and account for the majority of ad fraud in China.

Since unlike people, bots don’t buy things, their clicks are completely useless. Unfortunately, when bots are programmed to click on ads, advertisers are unknowingly paying for the clicks that will never convert.

Lead Fraud

This one is similar to bot traffic in a sense that it generates traffic that never converts. However, lead ad fraud in China involves human operators who are clicking the ads and even signing up. Although generated by real humans, this traffic is just useless as those coming from bots.

Click farms have become a luxurious business in China and they are especially active in social media – they sell clicks, likes, shares and social media followers. In recent years, Chinese authorities have been cracking down on such illegal operators. Those that were driven out of the country setup click farms in other locations such as Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam. In fact, one of such click farms specializing sing on WeChat was most recently busted by Thai police.

Ghost sites

Ghost sites are essentially fake webpages populated with content which is usually copied or plagiarized from other sites. Using SEO black hat techniques, those sites manage to make themselves available through ad networks or exchanges that participate in real-time bidding (RTB). Then they would typically use bots or click farms to generate ad impressions defrauding advertisers.

Ghost sites don’t have to be site clones – quite often they mask themselves as legitimate social media channels on Youku, Weibo or other popular platforms.

Spoofing

Spoofing is when a site poses as another website in order to attract ads. This causes advertisers to believe that their ads are served on a particular site and shown to the specific target audience while in reality they end up on low quality sites. What’s more, this type of fraud can be particularly damaging to the advertiser’s reputation.

Ad stacking or pixel stuffing

Ad stacking is a common ad fraud technique in which a publisher places multiple ads on top of each other in a single ad placement, leaving only the top-most ad actually viewable. When user visits the page, an impression is counted for each of the ads, including those that can’t actually be seen.

Source: Fun Mobility

Pixel stuffing is similar to ad stacking in which case none of the ads can actually be seen – they are all stuffed into a single pixel.

Malware and ad injection

This type of ad fraud in China is usually executed by a malicious piece of software on user’s computer. For example, malware is often responsible for ads on ad-free sites like Wikipedia. These ads got there because malware in a browser has injected fraudulent ad tags onto the page before it gets loaded. So, when fraudsters inject ads onto a site, they never actually pay for that ad space. Moreover, those ads may appear on irrelevant sites or even those with questionable content damaging advertiser’s reputation.

Anyone can become a victim of ad injection – they can sneak in with a seemingly innocent toolbar extension, get installed by clicking a link on opening an email attachment.

What can you do?

The best way to avoid falling victim to ad fraud in China is using reputable digital marketing service providers. Stay away from offers that sound too good to be true. Anyone who promises unrealistic results is probably using such illegitimate methods who are often being freely advertised on sites like Taobao.

Another good idea is to independently monitor ads performance with third party tools. While it isn’t always easy or even possible in China, there are new tools coming to the market every year.

The post Chinese Programmatic Ads: 6 Most Common Types of Ad Fraud in China first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post Chinese Programmatic Ads: 6 Most Common Types of Ad Fraud in China appeared first on Sampi.co.

Although, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, collectively known as BAT, account for the major part of China’s overall digital marketing ad spend, there are also other online channels where ads are bought and served. Outside of China placing such ads is typically done via programmatic deals through third party platforms. Unfortunately, due to several reasons, China programmatic ads ecosystem is a generation behind western markets.

On the other hand, there are signs that things are beginning to change. Top Chinese tech companies have been aggressively buying US ad tech firms which have already developed the right technology. Also some of the well-known services that connect advertisers with publishers via DSP (demand side platform) and SSP (supply side platform) are beginning to enter Chinese ad tech market.

Here are the main reasons why Chinese ad tech still plays smaller role compared to other forms of digital marketing:

#1: Technology

Technology is one of the reasons that many Chinese publishers are not offering ad spaces to advertisers via ad exchanges. Those domestic companies hasn’t yet open their APIs so advertisers could run programmatic ads via third party platforms.

#2: Government regulations

Publishers are bound by restrictive Chinese digital marketing regulations that limit their ability to accept many types of advertisers. This is especially the case concerning foreign advertisers. Such companies should go through a complex verification process before being approved to run ad campaigns in China.

#3: Publishers’ market fragmentation

For the majority of publishers in China it is still not common to work with third party SSPs to sell ad spaces. Many publishers tend to build their own ad exchanges or simply sell ad spaces directly to advertisers on contract basis.

#4: No common standard

Largest tech companies such as Baidu, Tencent and Qihoo have developed their own ad exchanges protocols which are not open to real time bidding ad exchanges. This makes plugging publishers inventory into third party SSPs very complicated and inefficient. The situation is even worse for mobile traffic.

#5: Influence of BAT

Largest publishers like YouKu are already owned by one or multiple Chinese tech giants making it more natural for those publishers selling their ad inventory to their owners. At the same time, due to absence of an efficient ad exchange system, small to medium size companies find it much easier selling their inventories to Baidu or Tencent’s own ad systems rather than doing it via smaller SSPs.

#6: Seller’s market

For the time being, publishers have little incentive to explore new channels to sell their ad space inventory as it remains primarily seller’s market where demand outstrips supply. This why many publishers prefer to deal directly with advertisers rather than using third party ad exchanges.

#7: Fraud problem

Unfortunately, when it comes to programmatic ads, fraud, in its many forms, is still a serious problem with Chinese ad tech. While it is, undoubtedly, a global problem, the underdeveloped state of programmatic ads in China makes it even worse. In our upcoming post we are going to look into different types of digital fraud in more details.

The post China Programmatic Ads: Why Chinese Ad Tech Is Still Behind the West first appeared on Sampi.co.

The post China Programmatic Ads: Why Chinese Ad Tech Is Still Behind the West appeared first on Sampi.co.