Tencent News is the top mobile news app by the total number of monthly active users (150.6 million), followed by Toutiao, Tiantian (also owned by Tencent), Sohu News, and Phoenix News.

Phoenix News Pro app tops the App Store paid news app ranking. All top 10 paid apps but Phoenix News are mobile gaming apps.  Ifeng.com believes that the algorithm has to strike a balance between news quality and personal interest; between common interest, potential interest, and individual interest.

Continue to read → China’s mobile apps market insights in 2016

According to EnfoDesk, market scale of China advertising platforms in Q3 reached 28.77 billion yuan (USD 4.7 billion), 24.2% more than Q2 2013.

In Q3 2013, Baidu occupied 30.8% market share by revenue, and Alibaba ranked the second with 15.9%. Google came to the third place in China advertising operators with 5.5%.

China advertising market in Q3 2013 grew steadily due to the slight recover of macroeconomic and the coming of sales season. Baidu remained its leading in China advertising operators, and keyword advertising was still the top advertising choice.

Tencent, Sohu, Sina,ifeng and NetEase together occupied 14.7% market share. Portal websites had broke the traditional business model of selling ads, integrating other resources such as social network, videos, entertainment and life services.

Baidu

On September 23 2013, Baidu announced that Baidu video app users hit 100 million which was the number one in mobile video market.

Baidu video is an OTT (Over the Top) – search, aggregation and play videos. When Baidu video users reached 100 million, in a degree, it has controlled the entrance to mobile videos. Besides, Baidu will list iQiyi videos in the front when several video websites have broadcast rights.

Baidu just declared its mobile video app was now open for advertisements to video websites partners, which means Baidu mobile video app not only aggregates large amount of videos to attract millions of users, but also sells ads to video websites. Baidu takes advantage of its technology to attract resources and make money without producing its own videos.

Sohu

Sohu video claimed to be number one in monthly visitors, in June and July’s UV, etc. Besides, Sohu also announced its self-made drama strategy, making it a high profile.

In 2013, Sohu video is driven by American drama broadcasting, TV variety show and self-made drama. They all cater for the highlights of this year, and it’s no wonder Sohu ranked top in monthly visitors and others. However, Sohu has to pick the new hit for the American drama and TV variety show has too much uncertainty and is constantly changing. This explains why Sohu cannot stay on the top for long.

ifeng

ifeng, too, announced its video app users reached 20 million on September 23 2013. It ranked the number one in news videos.

In China, almost all major video websites focus on entertainment except for ifeng video, which has the support from ifeng TV. It almost dominated in news video websites. On one hand, ifeng video owns the video resources from its partners such as ifeng TV, dragon TV. On the other hand, ifeng video also has its own UGC (User Generated Content) team.

But, it also faces huge challenges. First, how to transfer public attention from entertainment to news requires both effort and time. Second, ifeng video need to strengthen its promotion and advertising.

Though Baidu, Sohu and ifeng all claim to be number one in mobile video market, they have different focuses. Baidu has controlled the entrance to mobile videos, Sohu aims at topping in video industry and ifeng’s ambition is to secure its position in news videos.

China online ad market in Q2, from iResearch data, reached 23.26 billion yuan (USD 3.8 billion), growing 17.4% compared to Q1 and YoY growth of 27.4%. China online ad market is entering to a steady growth stage.

In Q2, search, video, news and navigation monthly usage increased. NetEase, Taobao and eTao had more than 10% QoQ growth, Sina, Sohu and iFeng had more than 7% QoQ growth.

Search engine ads kept growing in Q2 with 36.4% online ad market share. Vertical search ads and brand banner ads dropped slightly compared to Q1, with 22.4% and 21.2% share. Video ads grow steadily with 6.7% share.

Baidu, Google and Sogou promote the grow of search engine ads, market new player Qihoo’s 360 will further push it. Vertical search ads is due to the fast growth of Taobao search, online shopping increase brings up vertical search ads. High quality video content, such as movies, TV dramas and shows boost video ads growth.

In China top 10 online ad market companies, Baidu was still the leader with 7.56 billion yuan in revenue. Taobao came to the second with 5.61 billion yuan. Taobao, Qihoo’s 360 and Sohu had grown by more than 40%.

Qihoo’s 360 main revenue comes from navigation, growing steadily. Qihoo’s search ads conversion keeps increasing. Taobao has lots of small business which provide growing need for advertisement.Sogou search engine and its video contributed to its revenue growth.

According to Enfodesk, Baidu accounted for 30.9% of the total online ad revenue in China; Alibaba for 15.3%, and Google China for 6.2%.