Google Smartphone User Study Shows China’s Mobile Advertising Opportunities Are Huge

Guest author Julia Q. Zhu is a leading expert on international e-commerce in China and the Asia Pacific region. She formerly held multiple management positions for Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce company. Prior to Alibaba, Julia worked for iResearch in Beijing, China’s equivalent to ComScore. Follow Julia on Twitter @juliaqzhu.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) released a new report earlier this week on smartphone usage in China’s urban areas.

According to this study, China has one of the world’s highest levels of smartphone penetration – of the 97 percent of Chinese urban residents who own mobile phones, 35 percent use smartphones. The market opportunity for Chinese mobile advertising is clearly tremendous.

There are three main behavior traits behind this trend:

1. Chinese urbanites use smartphones all-day long… almost

Chinese smartphone users are on their phones everywhere, nearly all the time. 53 percent of Chinese smartphone users say that they plan to spend even more time using their phones in the future. China ranks third in the category of everyday smartphone usage in Google’s global study.

2. High awareness of mobile advertising

According to Google’s study, 50 percent of Chinese smartphone users notice mobile ads. After noticing a mobile ad:

• 39 percent click on the ad itself
• 39 percent search for additional information about the product on their computer
• 32 percent visit the company’s mobile website
• 32 percent make a purchase

3. Purchase-driven smartphone search

64 percent of Chinese smartphone users conduct online searches every week. The chart below shows their main purpose for searching online. We can see mobile search helps to heavily influence purchasing decisions.