Alibaba Climbing, Google Slipping, in China’s Online Ad Market

Alibaba's ads in action on its ad platform page.

New stats just released by Analysys International show the online ad market in China expanding once again, with Alibaba and Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) showing the most growth, while Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) China advertising market share shrinks back further.

The Q4 2011 online ad market share – calculated by revenue – shows that the never-ending boom in e-commerce, coupled with Alibaba’s leadership of it in the B2C (Tmall) and C2C (Taobao) sectors, means that Alibaba’s aggressive ad platform push has resulted in 49 percent growth year-on-year, now standing at 17.4 percent. That’s the strongest proportional growth.

Baidu’s online ads account for 30.5 percent of revenue, up slightly over the previous year. Analysys International puts this down to a government push to get small- and medium enterprises (SMEs) online and engaged with internet search marketing. Google remains in third, now ebbing down to 6.5 percent. Sohu has remained stagnant year-on-year.

Sina saw a significant loss of market share, indicating that its traditional web portal has weakened its ad platform; plus, it doesn’t seem to have capitalised on its social success with Sina Weibo in order to turn that around.

Soufun might be the only unfamiliar name to readers. It’s a heavily-trafficked real-estate web portal, carrying mostly ads for housing developments.

Here are the Q4 2011 stats in contrast to the same period a year before:

[Source: Analysis International for Q4 2011 and Q4 2010]