|
Tudou.com
Chinese youth are more popular online -- and probably having more fun -- than you! |
In his opening speech on Tuesday for
Adtech Beijing,
William Bao Bean, partner at Softbank and former Deutsche Bank analyst, gave some fascinating figures. He compared China with the other huge online market (the U.S.), illustrating some major differences.
For Chinese youngsters, much more of their active social life is online. (Adtech is covered by a whole range of bloggers, but this report is based on notes from former International Herald Tribune reporter Thomas Crampton and Ogilvy online marketing guru Kaiser Kuo.)
According to Bean, almost 70 percent of Chinese youngsters are engaged in social networks; and they have on average 37 online friends whom they have never met in real life. In comparison, U.S. youths average 18 such friends. Also, 60 percent of Chinese youngsters downloads music, compared to 32 percent in the U.S.
China has 40 million online gamers, in a total online population of 162 million. However, only 21 million Chinese online gamers pay to play -- even though payments are pretty small, so ad revenue might be the only viable source of income.
Chinese video-sharing service Tudou is serving much more video than YouTube: 15 billion minutes per month, compared to YouTube's 3.5 billion. The average session at Tudou lasts 40 minutes, while at YouTube it's 15-20 minutes. Tudou claims it has 47 percent of the Chinese market.
Online ad spending in China is still low: 4.3 percent of US$ 25.8 billion in 2006, but expected to rise by 55 percent in 2007, and 70 percent in 2008 because of the Olympic Games in Beijing. In the U.S., currently 12 percent of ad revenue goes online.
