Search advertising has become a booming market in China, a result that will hearten executives at search engines who have been criticized over their involvement in the country.
The report cited a study by China Computer World Research. That study found Chinese firms spent $215 million on search advertising during the period.
The number of firms utilizing search advertising could increase very rapidly:
Liu Bing, a senior analyst at CCW Research, said he believes search engine marketing will continue to grow. With more than 20 million potential customers among Chinese firms, he said the search engine market is still very small.
“As search engine advertising develops, the market will expand,” he said.
Major search engines including Baidu, Yahoo and Google enjoyed a 52.9 percent rise in revenues from China, the study also noted.
Technology companies have entered the Chinese market accompanied by plenty of criticism. Yahoo has been the target of complaints from Reporters Without Borders due to incidents of journalists being jailed and evidence provided by Yahoo under legal compulsion used in those prosecutions.
Google tried to avoid Yahoo’s situation by not locating services using personally identifiable information, like Gmail, on servers in China. But the company’s compliance with Beijing’s censorship rules has drawn just as much incendiary commentary, if not more, than Yahoo’s activity has.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
