Chinese Startup Weibo Bridge Matches Advertisers With Weibo Power Users

Do you wish your weibo feed had more advertisements on it? Yeah, neither do I, but advertisers sure do, especially when those ads are coming from users you trust and chose to follow. That’s where Chinese startup Weibo Bridge comes in. The service matches advertisers with weibo power users (on both Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo) who are willing to post ads in return for some extra spending money.

Any weibo user can sign up to become a billboard, but Weibo Bridge does some analysis to make sure that advertisers aren’t getting fleeced; you’ll need 2,000 active followers (as determined by Weibo Bridge) to be visible to advertisers. Users are then recommended to advertisers based on the advertisers’ target markets so that those advertisers can make do precise, targeted weibo ad campaigns. Users who run their ads are paid depending on a bunch of factors — their followers, the campaign goals, etc. — so compensation varies, but Weibo Bridge promises that it’s fair.

Although it’s still young, the site is already seeing success. On the front page, it claims that it already offers advertisers more than 12,000 weibo accounts to advertise on, who have a total of more than 1.6 billion followers (obviously, some of these users have the same followers, so many followers are counted multiple times). Most impressive, the frontpage boasts a “yesterday’s signups” counter that reads over 6,000 at the moment — evidence that users are getting excited about Weibo Bridge. It also has an impressive successful cases page that indicates companies like Baidu, HP, Qunar, Meituan, 360Buy, La Miu, and many more have all chosen to partake in Weibo Bridge’s services.

Of course, those numbers are all self-reported, so take them with a grain of salt. The team behind Weibo Bridge claims to have a lot of previous experience in the industry, and given the slick layout of its site, I’m not surprised to learn that. But I’d also like to know more about who is behind this company, and the site is pretty low on details. (We’ve emailed the company to see if we can put a few questions to its founder and we’ll do another interview post when they get back to us).

Still it’s a slickly-presented service in an industry that’s growing rapidly. Weibo Bridge looks like the real deal, and it’s definitely one Chinese startup we’ll be keeping a close eye on.