Google Rolls Out Its Real-Time DoubleClick Ad Exchange in China

Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) DoubleClick Ad Exchange service has launched in China, giving local businesses a new online advertising option to choose from. DoubleClick was bought by Google back in 2008, and is only now coming to mainland China. The platform allows users to get real-time control over their web ads, including very targeted ads and dynamic audience or platform selection; it’s a part of Google’s broader Ads Display Network.

The US search giant removed it servers from mainland China in March 2010 and at the time shuttered its Google.cn search engine. But its offices and ad business remained in place in Beijing and Shanghai. Despite its now Hong Kong-based search engine losing a lot of market share in China, Google has insisted that its online ad network is thriving in the country.

Google’s China country manager for media and platforms solutions, David Chen, announced the DoubleClick roll-out on the company’s local blog (which is, lamentably, blocked in China along with the whole Blogspot domain). In an official translation provided by Google to Tech in Asia, David says:

[T]oday we’re excited to announce the launch of DoubleClick Ad Exchange in China, a step towards creating a more open display advertising ecosystem for everyone. The Ad Exchange is a real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side; and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell display advertising space.

To explain the Doubleclick value proposition, he borrowed an analogy from the airline industry:

[S]ome publishers are left with up to 80 percent of their ad space unsold. It’s like airlines flying with their planes mostly empty. And for the ad space that they do sell, publishers also have to deal with the complexity of managing thousands of advertisers and campaigns.

Google’s main online ad competitors in China include the rival search engine, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), the e-commerce giant Alibaba, and the web portal Sohu (NASDAQ:SOHU).