Over three-quarters of China internet users trust news and information from traditional media in 2016 compared with 70% in 2015 according to a research by Edelman.

Owned media is the least trusted online news source, followed by social media in China.

Weibo was the most active social mobile app in China in 2015 with high user monthly coverage rate and long usage time according to TrustData. Monthly active users of Weibo was 222 million as of September 2015 according to Tencent. Read more…

Advertising spend can reflect changes in the economic structure of China. Real estate ad spends decreased by 26.2% year on year and fell down to 28.6% in the first three-quarters this year compared to the same period last year according to CTR.

Related: China social media trend 2015

Following Chinese government’s promotion of “internet plus” strategy, online advertising market in China reached a growth rate of 94.7% as of 30 September this year. Taobao invested 1.3 times more in advertising from January to September 2015 compared to the same period last year, Suning 1.1 times, and Vipshop even 10 times.

China’s traditional advertising spends have declined in recent years by and large while it declined 7.3% as of 30 September this year out of expectation. The traditional advertising market in the third quarter decreased 10.1% compared to the previous quarter which reached a record low.

Print media newspaper and magazines advertising spends in this industry also decreased sharply with a growth rate of -34.5% and -18.5% respectively as of Q3 2015 compared to the same period last year. Advertising spend on TV and radio also declined while only the outdoor increased by 0.6%.

Beverage, cosmetics, foods, medicine, and business and service focused on TV advertising in the first three-quarter this year. However, the overall spends on TV advertising declined compared to the same period last year. Cosmetics decreased by 23.5% and business and service dropped by 13.7%. Medicine increased by 23.7% on TV advertising revenues.

Similarly with TV advertising, the overall radio advertising market also declined, among which real estate industry spend decreased by 8.5% in the first three-quarters of 2015 compared to spends in the same period last year.

Newspaper and magazine advertising has suffered a great hit. Even among the top 5 advertising sectors, advertising spends decreased to a large extent this year compared to the same period last year.

Compared to the large advertising revenues on the outdoor last year, the real estate industry was more prudent with only 5% increase in advertising in the first three-quarters this year. In general, the outdoor advertising market maintained a relatively good momentum this year.

Building video advertising, which mainly referred to the advertising on large LCD screens outside the building and on the TV inside the elevators, increased by 15.2% in revenues this year compared to the same period last year. Beverage, cosmetics and transportation industry declined in advertising spend while telecommunication and computer increased dramatically.

Chinese tended to spend more money on entertainment thus cinema video advertising gained the attention of the entrepreneurs. The overall cinema video advertising market grew by 56.2% among which the telecommunication industry increased by 107% YoY in the first three-quarters this year.

Video advertising on buses, trains, subways and such increased by 8.9% as of 30 September this year. With transit advertising costs increasing, some sectors reduced spend such as as entertainment, foods and events. In contrast, business and service sector sspent 19.5% more on transit video advertising in the first three-quarters this year.

Online advertising market gained a wide-range blossom with a growth rate of 94.7%. Finance industry with a growth rate of 57.4% YoY was the fifth-largest online advertising sector and the telecommunications was the largest. Jingdong, Taobao, Mogujie, Suning, Kaola and other e-commerce companies have invested heavily on online advertising.

Also read: China Advertising Insights 2015

China users’ time spent on digital media has exceeded that on traditional media in 2015. Digital media is the largest media by ad revenue; online ad revenue will continue to grow, especially mobile ad revenues.

According to eMarketer, China internet users on average spend over 6 hours 8 minutes on media per day, of which over 3 hours on social media, 2 hours 40 minutes on TV, 11 minutes on  radio, 10 minutes on newspaper, and only 1 minute on magazine. 94.8% users over 18 years old watch television while spending less time is spent. 46% users use the internet (PC), 43.1% use smartphones, and 42% use feature phones.

The compound average growth rate (CAGA) of print media (newspaper and magazine) from 2011 to 2015 is -7.4%. The CAGA of newspaper is -5.1% and the CAGA of magazine is -7.4%. A report from Kantar shows the number of social media users in urban aras grow quickly from 28.6% in 2013 to 34% in 2014, which indicates that social media gradually become mainstream.

Diversification is one of the most obvious features of China social media, the post-90s are the largest group whose average age in 2014 is 30.4 years old; the average age in 2013 is 28.8 years old, which indicates that more different age-groups begin to use social media.

The number of users in the second, third and fourth-tier cities has increased while the number of users in first-tier cities has declined. The ratio of high education users dropped.

Chinese users prefer to use mobile internet for social media. Most people like using WeChat and Weibo on mobile apps while browsing BBS on computers. And different age level users have different internet behaviors. The post-90s often watch videos, the post-90s often shop online, and the post-70s often read news on the website.

In 2013, China internet users use Qzone most frequently while in 2014 WeChat became one of the most frequent-used mobile apps in China. More original content were generated on WeChat Weibo for the first time in 2014, and the engagement on WeChat was higher.

Chinese users who only read information on social media tend to be more according to data of Chinamedia 360. In 2014, 46% social media users didn’t participate in topic discussion or leave comments compared with 39% in 2013. A majority of users expected to get instant and practical information from social media; and users were more concious of privacies. Thus interactivities turn to be less.

Let’s take Wechat and Weibo as examples.

The average age of WeChat users is 26 years old, 97.7% users are under 50 years old. Most of WeChat users are employees, freelances, students and staff in state-owned enterprises.

WeChat has become an important part of Chinese life. 25% users on average open WeChat over 30 times per day, and 52.2% users over 10 times. About half of WeChat users have over 100 WeChat friends, 62.7% users have over 50 WeChat friends.

WeChat official account is one of the major features of WeChat. About 80% users would follow official accounts, especially accounts of companies and media. 29.1% official account users follow WeMedia accounts, 25.4% follow verified media accounts, 18.9% follow companies, 5.9% follow marketing accounts, and other 20.7% don’t follow any account. Over 40% users want to get information from official accounts.

Official subscription accounts can be categorized in entertainment, health, news, beauty and fashion by content. 42% accounts would interact with fans. Entertainment accounts are most welcome.

Combined MAU of Weixin (Chinese version of Wechat) and WeChat were 600 million as of 30 Jun 2015. Weibo MAUs reached 212 million in Q2 2015. 72% are 19 to 35 years old, the post-80s and post-90s are major parts of Weibo users. Male users made up of 60.9%, and female of 39.1%. Users in South China and East China are more active on Weibo than users in other parts of China.

Also read: WeChat Offers 8 Solutions For Smart Devices

In 2015, when the total usage of digital media users outpaced that of traditional media, the social media also showed their own unique development properties and characteristics in China.

Businesses of all sizes and levels in China are committed to test and realize the value of their social media marketing. Entrepreneurs expect to improve their brand awareness, and increase website traffic and audience reach to obtain more customers.

Companies were expected to measure ROI (return on investment), tie social activities to business outcomes, develop social media strategy, which were challenging to achieve through their social media programs.

Influence of social media activity was difficult to quantify. Marketers in China fall easily into simply referring to the number of followers, likes and reposts as the only measurement for the success of their China social media campaigns. Engagement (likes, shares, etc.), audiences (followers, fans, etc.), website traffic, leads and other metrics were several major metrics to measure the success of social media programs.

The average number of tools to analyze and report on social media activities had relations with the scale and years of experience of the companies. Some Chinese companies remained satisfied with the data they collected while many companies were unsatisfied with the lack of useful tools.

Although social media enjoyed a large quantity of daily average users, most social media marketing have not been integrated into the enterprise objective. Among all the respondents surveyed by TrustRadius, only about 50% agreed that social media data and analytics would impact the social media marketing strategy, and even less than 25% respondents agreed that the social media data and analytics would impact the companies’ overall business strategy.

Also read: China Advertising Insights 2015

In October 2014, China overall advertising market had an increase of 2.5% from the same period of prior year; and, ads spend on traditional media had a decrease of 4.4% YoY according to data of CTR.

The growth of advertising spend on radio station slowed from September 2014 and in October; it increased by 7% YoY in China. Among top 5 industries by ads spend in October in China, ads spend on finance decreased by 17%, while business & service industry, real estate & construction industry and transport increased by 9%, 6% and 23% respectively from the same period of prior year in October.

Beverage and medicine increased ads placement on traditional media a lot YoY in October 2014.

Among the top 5 industries by ads placement on business building videos in October 2014, beverage and transportation industries had great growth YoY.

In October 2014, ad spend on cinema video doubled; and top 3 industries by ads spend were transportation, communication and entertainment.

Industries like entertainment, communication and business/ service increased ads placement on public transportation videos from the same period of prior year in October 2014.

Also read: China Advertising Market in Tourism Industry in Q3 2014

In July 2014, China overall advertising market had an increase of 4.6%; and, ad spend on traditional media had an increase of 1.1% from prior year according to data of CTR.

Ad on newspaper and magazine had obvious decrease while cinema video advertising had 104% increase YoY.

Brands spending most on public transport video advertising in China included KFC, China Mobile, McDonald’s, Sunning ect. And, business building video ads were popular with brands like L’Oreal, Pantence, Pepsi, KFC ect. in July.

Also Read: China’s Top 10 Online media by Ad Revenue in Q2 2014

According to market conditions of various media, the advertising growth in the first quarter of 2013 was mainly due to the good performance of TV. Spend in many traditional media was declining with magazines bearing the biggest drop. However, TV had a slight increase in this quarter.

Provincial satellite TV stations had a growth rate of almost 30%, the largest increase among all levels of TV channels.