Qihoo 360 announced the launch in Hong Kong of Shangyi on 31 March 2016, which is a set of integrated data and marketing analytics tools designed to help local and overseas marketers and advertisers identify the unique characteristics of Chinese netizens in order to optimize their marketing strategies and enhance business growth.

Through understanding the behavior of Chinese netizens, and analyzing the insights obtained, Qihoo 360 Shangyi will help brands provide over 700 million Internet users in China with more effective brand experiences, and grasp the opportunities in the China market through both mobile and desktop devices.

China is one of the fastest-growing Internet search engine markets in the world. Market size reached RMB56 billion in the third quarter of 2015, representing an increase of about 40% year-over-year, with search engine marketing accounting for more than 30%, at RMB22 billion. According to a recent iResearch market survey, the market is expected to continue to expand rapidly, reaching RMB168 billion in 2018. With this surging trend, companies from around the world are looking to connect more effectively with customers in China. And with the big data analytics services offered by Shangyi, companies can now target the right audience more effectively, and understand their behavioral patterns and habits, so as to adjust their marketing strategies whenever appropriate.

said Mr. David Ip, Global Business Advisor of Qihoo 360 Technology Co., Ltd.

Shangyi is Qihoo 360’s first marketing analytics tool backed by the big data generated from Qihoo 360’s more than 1.6 billion users, helping companies develop intelligent marketing and promotion strategies. Shangyi’s core competitive edges include:

• offers in-depth data mining technology and multi-platform data processing capability collected from Qihoo 360’s big data pool
• consolidates multiple data sources, and offers data analytical reports in terms of search and browsing behavior, demographics and geographical segmentation
• meets multiple needs of marketing analytics – targeting audiences in multiple ways, and supporting a variety of analytical approaches

There is a huge variety of consumer preferences and behavioral patterns among Chinese netizens in different regions and demographic segments, which can be a real hurdle for overseas companies entering the China market. Qihoo 360 enjoys a leading position in China’s Internet industry. Its brand effect and comprehensive big data resources provide an optimized channel for overseas companies, helping them to make the right business decisions and achieve better operational efficiency when targeting audiences within particular regions, user groups and behavioral segments,

added Mr. David Ip.

E-commerce brand Ebates and online travel website Hotels.com have both deployed Qihoo 360’s search engine marketing solutions to drive their brand exposure and awareness, and boost traffic on their websites.

Ms. Catherine Lu, Vice President, Marketing, Ebates Inc. Greater China, said, “As one of Mainland China’s Internet giants, Qihoo 360 played a crucial role in our entrance and expansion in the China market. Through Qihoo 360’s search platform,

Ebates has successfully gained brand awareness and accelerated its sales in China according to Ms. Catherine Lu, Vice President, Marketing, Ebates Inc. Greater China. They believe that Shangyi will offer global brands more in-depth and effective marketing data by analyzing users’ search behavior and geographic and demographic segmentation.

Hotels.com are also pleased that they have successfully driven their brand awareness and business expansion through Qihoo 360’s search platform. Hotels.com increased orders by 50% year-on-year.

Contact us here if you’d like to open a Qihoo 360 SEM account.

Also read: Weibo Search Users Insights 2015

The number of professional Weibo vertical publishers (mostly individual authors), who are often called We-media owners, reached 2.3 million covering 47 sectors as of November 2015 in China. The number of top authors, each of whom received average monthly article views of more than 100,000, reached 253,000 as of 30 November 2015.

Top authors in total gained more than 200 million yuan (US$31.06 million) revenues from Weibo. Over 200 authors gained 28 million yuan (US$4.35 million) revenues from paid views in less than six months since launched on Weibo. “Donations” after viewing articles reached 44 million yuan and advertising shared profit was 128 million.

Weibo has become the largest content production and consumption platform in China. Advertising revenues on Weibo reached 128 million yuan as of November 2015. Verified individual accounts on Weibo had a relatively large impact on the public. As of November Weibo vertical authors reached 2.3 million, the number doubled compared to the same period last year.

Authors with average monthly article views of over 100,000 reached 253,000 this year. Monthly active users of Weibo reached 222 million in Q3 2015. Weibo users on average released 11 posts per day and the average views of per post amounted to 9800 times growing 83% compared to the same period last year. Overall posts on Weibo have increased 64% YoY by November 2015.

The number of top authors in 10 sectors each has exceeded 5,000 people which led an active content consumption on Weibo. Top authors in the stock area reached over 6,000 people with an icnrease of 70% YoY as of November 2015, and the average views increased by 89% YoY. Average daily comments on per post in the stock trading sector on Weibo reached 300,000 with nearly eight million active investors making Weibo become the most rapid discussion and transaction reference platform in China.

Top authors gained more than 200 million revenues from Weibo. Fans rewards brought over 44 million yuan (US$6.83 milliom) for them and over 200 authors gained 28 million yuan revenue from paid-article only in less than six months after paid-reading services launched on Weibo.

To support posts shifting toward more long posts and videos, Weibo is increasing the efforts to reward the authors in vertical areas next year from brand values, consumer values and commercial values according to the vice president of Weibo.

Weibo has made several optimization to the publishing features. “Headline article” will be online by the end of December which can present a long article shown in a more eye-catching way in the content feeds. Content editing and article loading are optimized for better experience.

Headline articles can be used on PC, mobile client as well as mobile apps. Weibo will promote Weibo Note App as an external and independent tool for publishing long articles. Weibo will also be open to more third-party publishing tools. In addition, Weibo will launch single paid-article features.

Weibo also announced the launch of a joint video broadcast product with Miaopai where users can interact with the anthors. This product is also designed for user rewards and paid views which will further broaden the commercial values for vertical authors.

Weibo will work to increase the exposure of authors through marketing methods and business tools according to the vice president of Weibo. Revenues of authors will be expected to reach over 400 million yuan in 2016.

Also read: China Social Media Users Insights in 2015

In May 2015, CTR, a Chinese reserach company, announced a new report on China advertising market, which focused on key industries and top advertising marketing companies.

In early 2015, advertisers had more confidence in their industries and companies compared with last year.

The total budget increase in 2015 came the lowest since 2009, and the reduction rate was 29%, which was the highest in recent 7 years. Companies had less expectation for the future market.

Most advertisers popularized products through multi-channel marketing and agreed that building a good brand image is essential for marketing. In 2015, it gradually became a trend for companies to buy direct advertisements from media, and invest more in digital marketing.

In 2015, TV, internet and end promotion would become major marketing tools. Second-tier and third-tier cities, east China, Central China and South China would be key marketing areas; the first-tier cities and northwestern China would cut marketing expenditures, according to CTR.

In recent 2 years, advertising tools increased, more advertisers would choose to use multimedia, especially mobile internet and events marketing.

Provincial TV sites would be first choices for most advertisers, while CCTV sites had less advertising than last year, digital TV advertising has been increasing for 3 successive years.

2015 would see a year of large input in social media, video and search engineer advertising, both in PC internet and mobile internet. New outdoor media, such as cinema advertising and bus advertising would attract more advertisers.

While investing in advertisements in internet terminal, it is always not easy to judge their effectiveness, advertisers must consider all concerned factors before making decisions. More and more advertisers tend to popularize products through several multimedia combination, and like to help build brand image through TV, outdoors and prints. They get a clear view towards each promotion channel, the interactivity of internet, low cost of the radio advertising, which helps them choose a better advertising channel.

Also read: China Online Advertising Market in Q1 2015

There are many free HTML5 editing tools in China nowadays which help businesses and individuals to create their own HTML5 based applications more easily. Here are 10 free HTML5 editing tools which are all developed by Chinese companies.

Chuye

Chuye is an app for poster creation on mobile device which can be downloaded in App Store. Users can create their posters on their mobile phones.

Maka

Maka is now only available on the website and has no mobile clients for Android and iOS. It provides various templates and animated effects for users to choose.

Liveapp

Liveapp is a cloud service platform for enterprises. Recently, it started providing free trial for 31 days.

Xiu Zhizuo

“Xiu zhizuo” is one product of Xiumi, which can provide various free templates and easy editing.

Dodoca

Dodoca, as one of the third-party service platform for WeChat, promotes free posts without registration. It can help create animated posters with slide animations, background music, traffic analysis and so on.

Rabbitpre

Rabbitpre.com only works with Safari and Chrome claiming to provide free service for ever.

Eqixiu

Eqixiu’s templates can add text and image with dynamic effect like sliding and zooming. It also has iOS mobile client-side for users.

Pinqu

Pinqu is a marketing software for small and middle-sized enterprises.

ePub360.com

It is developed for professional designers with strong interactive functions, more design flexibilities but more difficult to use for beginners.

Vxplo.cn

It focuses on online interactive design which can create light applications with zero coding experience.

Also read: China Navigation Websites Study

2013 was gone in a flash. Social share still enjoyed a strong momentum in the past year. JiaThis, the biggest social share tool in China, released its data-based Report of China Social Share Tools in 2013. Overall social sharing times reached 1.4 billion in 2013.

While login to social media accounts such as QQ and Sina Weibo, users also shared content on different platforms. One-click share accounted for 5.6% in all sharing methods.

According to sharing period statistics, the peak period in a day was from 13 to 16, accounted for about 24.8%.

Video websites drove most social visits by social sharing, accounted for 27.39%.

Hot sharing words included Haze, Tuhao and Bit coin in 2013.

The number of male users was significantly higher than female users, almost twice the number.

Top 5 regions of sharing were: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Beijing. Guangdong remained on the first place, with a proportion of 16.28%.

.CN Chinese Domain Registration

If you want to register a China Country code top level domain (ccTLD), .CN for Chinese market, it requires the following documents:

• A completed .CN domain application form
• A copy of your  Business License (registered in China; can be Hong Kong registered commercial entity)
• A copy of your Signatory’s National ID. Signatory must be a Chinese citizen and has a valid PRC personal ID

ICP license number (Internet Content Provider) is a permit issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to permit China-based websites to operate in China. The ICP license numbers for Chinese websites can often be found on the bottom of the front webpage.

If Registrant is not registered in China’s MIIT ICP Recording system, domain name will be on “serverhold” status till MIIT ICP number is provided.

ICP registration can be done at www.miibeian.gov.cn or via domain registrar.

Exemption from China’s ICP Recording Number

The requirement of submitting ICP number can be exempted under the following circumstances:

1. For non website usage purpose. Applicant needs to submit “the letter of commitment of the usage of domain name for non website purpose”.
2. For website server not located in Mainland China. Applicant needs to submit “the letter of commitment of the usage of domain name for website whose server is not based in mainland China”.

So, if you want to host your website in China, you should have a registered business with Chinese government. Note that if your domain is not .CN, such as .com or .net, having a Chinese national representative in China can also get you the ICP number.

Hosting Your Website in China

No matter where you registered your domain, you must register with MIIT to get ICP number. So, ICP recording number is the key if you want to host your website in China.

Hosting Your Website Outside China

If you host your website outside China (even in Hong Kong), you may run into one of the two problems:

• Your website is completely not accessible. There is so far no guarantee your site being hosted outside China is accessible in China; this could happen even if your website has no political or pornographic content.
• Your website can be accessed by Internet users in China but very slow.

Check Whether Your Website Can Be Accessed in China

Ask friends from different cities in China to help check whether your website is accessible and how comfortable they are with the loading speed of the website. Or, you could use free tools from websitepulse.com or greatfirewallofchina.org to check:

A few other free tools include: Just-Ping.com and viewdns.info,

One thing to be clear though, passing the test does not guarantee all users in China can access your website. Some CIW reported they have to use proxy or VPN to access this blog. Users in different cities may or may not be able to access your site.

How to Prevent Your Website from Being Blocked

If you website is hosted outside China, there is no way you can be 100% sure no matter what content you publish. However, these are the best you can do to prevent that:

• Use a VPS or dedicated server with a unique IP address. On shared hosting, if someone else with the same IP address is blocked, your website is collateral damage
• Avoid publishing political content
• Avoid posting sensitive news. One way to judge whether a piece of news can be published is to go to search Chinese news website and if they published it, it’s safe.
• No pornographic content or gambling related

You can also watch this video below: