Last year I talked to a Chinese friend of mine about the internet growth and the need for new Chinese marketing channels in china. The thing is that a lot of parameters suggest that the Chinese online market will explode, which it in fact already has. Later I talked to my father, and independently he had also done some slight research of this interesting and potential very lucrative market for the purpose of investing. His main interest was the large search engines and portals as baidu.com, which has seen immense growth lately.
The thing is that now a lot of foreign companies have found that China is not just an interesting place to look for products to export, or establish production facilities. It is a very interesting market to sell to too. The amount of strong buyers is rising steadily, which calls for stronger, better and more modern marketing channels.
I am unaware of how precise the “online marketing” market is in China, but I would expect it to grow very dramatic at the moment. The service sector “only” amounts to about one third of the Chinese economy. Due to increasing trade, not just exports, and increased privatization of the sector, I would expect a higher demand for domestic services.
The amount of internet users in china is growing like no other place on earth. That fact would itself support the thought that online marketing is growing too. I think that if there is ever going to be another klondyke.com era it would be starting right now, and in China. There are so many new businesses appearing daily in China, and they all more or less need to deliver their message. The online Channel is perfect for that, and is a relatively cheap instrument compared to TV commercials. It also gives the company the opportunity to delivery whatever message they want, when they want it. Once the channel (website) is established, the marginal cost of that channel will decline, because what is costly, is the implementation. The maintenance of content has relatively low cost, because neither expert knowledge nor production is needed. And unlike print ads, or TV commercials, the message can be changes from minute to minute.
According to Alexa, 3 of the top 10 sites are Chinese at the moment. All of them are targeted at the middle country, and none has a wider international target. But maybe that will be the newt step?