HANGHAI, Oct. 17 — Viacom said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal to provide television and music video content to Baidu, one of China’s biggest and fastest-growing Internet companies.

The alliance between Viacom’s MTV Networks and Baidu.com, one of the world’s most heavily trafficked Web sites, is the biggest effort so far to introduce American television and entertainment content and programming into China.

The deal comes just two months after MTV Networks — which produces the MTV music video channel as well as Nickelodeon and popular cartoon programs like SpongeBob SquarePants — formed a similar alliance with Google to distribute advertising-supported video clips over the Internet.

“This is an extraordinary milestone for us,” said Bill Roedy, the head of MTV Networks International. “This gives us an amazing opportunity to tap into a new market.”

Western media companies, including Viacom, have struggled to get their programming onto television in China, and they have often been frustrated by new regulations, restrictions, delays and other hurdles.

Asked whether the new deal was a way for MTV Networks to get its programming into China through a means other than television, Mr. Roedy said no.

“This was not designed to get around the regulations,” he said. “We know how to live with regulations.”

Viacom officials point to their recent deals with China’s two major mobile phone service providers, China Mobile and China Unicom, to deliver music charts, entertainment news and ring tones. MTV’s popular SpongeBob SquarePants program recently began running on state-controlled China Central Television, or CCTV. And new consumer product tie-ins to the cartoon shows are beginning to show up here.

MTV officials also say the deal is not unique to China; they say MTV Networks has been aggressively expanding into digital products for the last few years, producing programming and content specifically for the Internet and mobile devices and broadening its reach.

Today, MTV is broadcast into southern China and some foreign hotels and residences, and Viacom has an alliance with the Shanghai Media Group. But otherwise very little American programming makes it onto China’s main television channels. And Disney and News Corporation programs are rarely seen.

Analysts here say most Internet users in China are far more interested in entertainment than in search or pure information. So, they add, the MTV alliance with Baidu makes some sense.

“The demographics between MTV and Baidu — they are very similar,” said Richard Ji, an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley. “Seventy percent of the Internet users in China are under the age of 30. And MTV is very popular in China but they do not have full landing rights.”

Baidu, which is widely known here as China’s Google, is already the fourth-most-trafficked Web site in the world with more than 250 million page views a day. And China, with about 123 million users, is the fastest-growing Internet market, now second only to the United States.

According to the agreement, MTV Networks will provide Baidu with 15,000 hours of original video and licensed music content, much of which will be dubbed and tailored to Chinese viewers. For instance, many videos will feature Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese artists now popular here. And most of the content will range from 10 to 30 minutes long.

To avoid copyright issues with American music companies, most of the music available on Baidu’s site will come from Asia.

Also, as part of the deal, Baidu said it would create its first branded area on its Web site, which will be called MTV Zone.

Viewers will pay a fee to download the content and there will also be advertising linked to the content. The two companies, MTV Networks and Baidu, will share the revenue with music companies.

From : The New York Times.

Attendees of Search Engine Strategies conferences in North America and Europe know that the searcher behavior panel has grown into one of the most popular sessions of the show. No surprise why: sophisticated search marketers have mostly mastered the tactical aspects of their craft, and in looking for a competitive edge turn to one of the least-understood variables of the overall search marketing equation—the needs of searchers and how best to satisfy them.

The Searcher Behavior panel at SES China offered some of the first research ever done looking at the needs of Chinese searchers. The results were fascinating, and in some cases surprising. While Chinese searchers shared many characteristics of western searchers, their behavior was also quite different—sometimes dramatically different—from their counterparts elsewhere in the world.

Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro kicked things off by presenting findings from a new eyetracking study on the behavior of Chinese-speaking users who completed search tasks on market leading engines Baidu and Google China. In a nutshell, Enquiro found that Chinese users interacted with search results in vastly different ways than western searchers. Gord plans to write up a report of the study and its findings for Search Engine Land very soon, so I won’t steal his thunder. Keep an eye on the Just Behave column in June for the full details.

Deborah Fallows, senior research fellow of Pew Internet & American Life Project, has been living in China for the past eight months (see her hilarious At Home in Shanghai, a week’s worth of diary posts on living in China).

Deb has done several studies for Pew focusing on the user perceptions and attitudes of American searchers. She’s continued this work in China, attempting to understand who Chinese searchers are and they are and how they use the internet. Unlike Enquiro’s eyetracking research which looked at behavioral responses to search results, Deb’s research is based on user perceptions and attitudes. Using data from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC—the state network information center of China), and Guo Liang, a Chinese researcher at the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, Fallows has assembled a fascinating portrait of internet users in China.

Contrary to the U.S., search is not one of the most common online activities in China. What are the most popular activities for Chinese internet users?

Get news - 93%
Surf the web - 86%
Listen/download music - 85%
Play online games - 84%
Use email - 69%
Instant messaging - 67%
Use search engine - 63%
Research products & services - 63%

These activities are very different than the most common activities of U.S. internet users:

Use search engine and email - tied at 91%
Find health info - 79%
Check the weather - 78%
Get travel info - 73%
Get news - 67%

“While searching is important, there are other things on the internet that [Chinese] users will do,” said Fallows.

Popular activities don’t always equate with the types of things users spend the most amount of time doing. What online activities do Chinese users spend the most time doing?

Emil - 56%
News - 54%
Search - 52%
Getting information (products, health services, gov etc) - 41%

This suggests that although search isn’t one of the most popular online activities, it’s still something that Chinese users spend a lot of time doing (indeed, Enquiro’s research found that Chinese searchers using Baidu spent two to three times or more longer examining search result pages than U.S. based searchers).

Deb thinks that Chinese users enjoy interacting with search engines. “People are very engaged with search engines on the Chinese internet, as much as anything as they do. And it’s something that will probably increase as time goes on,” she said.

What about the actual duration of time spent with search engines each week? Deb offered the following stats from the CNNIC January 2006 “17th Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China.”

2.2 hours searching for work or study info
2.0 hours doing email
1.7 hours searching for personal hobby info
.9 hours playing online games
.9 hours reading news
.7 hours chatting

These numbers are significant, as the average Chinese internet user spends 15 - 16 hours per week online.

“In the U.S. we’re used to people searching frequently, but we’re not seeing them spend a lot of time on search engines,” said Fallows. One possible reason that users are spending so much time searching is that they’re not finding relevant results as quickly as U.S. searchers. Deb also suggested that it could be due to slower internet connections that cause downloads of search result pages to take longer.

“People spend a lot of time on search results. I also suspect that there’s a lot more hanging around on discussion boards to discuss the results that they get,” said Fallows, noting a feature found on Chinese search engines that’s typically not present on U.S. search engines.

How about popular topics? By category, Chinese users sought out:

Entertainment - 68%
Work or study information - 56%
News - 43%
General knowledge - 43%

“This underscores that the state and interest of the internet in China is very heavily geared toward entertainment,” said Fallows.

How successful do Chinese searchers consider themselves to be when it comes to finding information on the internet?

14% say they usually find what they’re looking for
56% say they often find what they’re looking for
30% say they sometimes find what they’re looking for.

These findings mirror what Pew has found in the U.S. “This is a very strong result. That means that they have a pretty good sense of themselves as searchers and consider themselves successful,” said Fallows. However, “People have an inflated sense of themselves as searchers. Maybe people think of themselves as better than they actually are. They don’t really know how to handle search engines that well.”

Deb has an optimistic view of the future of search in China. “Search engine use will be increasingly popular,” she said. “People will search for more topics. Time is on the side of search engines and search engine users. People will search more and they will get better at it,” she said.

Deb concluded by offering a tip for search marketers in China trying to connect more effectively with prospects. “Try to think of yourselves as an internet user, because most of the people using the internet don’t have nearly as much sophistication as you do,” she said.

Next, Tony Fu, Research Director for Data Center of the China Internet presented findings from data collected in 2007 survey, trying to understand the opportunities for search advertisers in China. Fu spoke rapidly in Chinese, and the translators seemed to miss or garble most of his points, so I’ll try to report what I gleaned mostly from looking at his powerpoint slides.

Fu said that the search engines face a dilemma in China. They have more users than the popular portals (Sina, Tom.com et al), but portals currently have greater advertising revenue. So there’s a big opportunity for search engines to capture some of that online advertising spend, if they can figure out how to connect more effectively with their users.

The usage overlap with users of search engines and portals is 100%, but Fu believes that search engines have greater potential, and he foresees an evolution as users migrate away from portals and toward search engines, a pattern that played out in the U.S. in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Fu thinks the current problem is that search engines aren’t tapping their full potential. He says they haven’t established effective ad measurement systems yet, especially when compared with the data provided to TV and newspaper advertisers in China.

Fu said that search engines have the advantage over portals going forward because search engine users tend to be more loyal than portal users. Furthermore, newcomers to the internet in China tend to start out with a portal, then migrate to a search engine as they become more comfortable navigating cyberspace.

The findings presented by all three speakers were fascinating, but only underscored how little is really known about searchers in China. Hopefully, all three of the panelists will continue this important work in understanding the mind of the Chinese searcher.

From Search Engine Land

In China, it used to be a fact that only people with stable jobs and income gets credit cards. At that time, there weren’t many Chinese accept the idea of borrowing money from the bank. For them, having a debt is something goes with pressure.

Until recent years. the quicken pace of development enables Chinese credit card market to welcome its age.

At colleges lying in big cities, boys and girls —- almost everyone of them, having at least one credit card in their pockets—-some may have two or three. They don’t have a full-time job ( maybe not a part-time one either) at all, but that isn’t what the bank cares about. In order to widen its business, it persuaded themselves to trust that the parents of those undergraduates will pay for their kids finally since the young often fail to manage their pocket money well. Moreover, when the young consider holding a credit card something cool, they go their utmost to persuade their dear mama and papa. There are about 1,600,000 undergraduates in China, how many credit card we can sell then?

Some friends of mine used to go China for a trip in early years complained that they just couldn’t find a place to use their cards:  “Cash please.” “Cash only.” —-‘I can speakthe two sentences in Chinese.”, Janet told me .

If you are told by people around like the above, they must been to China long time before. In most big cities in Mainland China, credit card is acceptable almost everywhere from Walmart to a little so called store. VISA, Matercard… kinds of shining logos represents a soaring development of a country with 1/5 population in the world.

The last but not the least, studying or traveling abroad is no longer a dream for people in China. In some top cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and capital Beijing, which country to go this vacation is the best has already been one of the hottest topics. Most of them are willing to go America, England or the Europe. In this case, they need to apply for a credit card which is useful not only in their nation.

In short, from my point of view, gold is lying under the market of Chinese credit card. Are you ready to go??

 See what the consultant says

The Chinese Credit Card Market Presents Great Opportunities

Credit Card Market

Overview

Through the year ending December 31, 2004, China issued 762 million bankcards, of
which 664 million were debit cards and 98 million were credit cards, according to the
latest statistics from the People’s Bank of China (hereafter, PBOC), the nation’s central
bank. There are over 150 banking card issuers, including the ‘big four’ banks: the
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; the Bank of China; the China Construction
Bank, and the Agricultural Bank of China. There is also a fast-growing second tier of
shareholding banks and city commercial banks that issue banking cards. China’s state
owned commercial banks also issue dual-currency cards that allow cardholders to
purchase goods within China, in RMB, and while abroad, in US dollars.

Nationwide, about five percent of purchases are made using bankcards, up 2.9 percent
from three years earlier. The percentage is as high as 20 percent in big cities such as
Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Consumers use their credit cards
mainly to purchase houses, vehicles, and home appliances, as well as to pay utility bills.
China UnionPay, which was established to set up a national processing network
connecting merchants and banks, has set up a national bankcard information switch
center and bankcard network service centers in 18 cities. As of December 30, 2005,
China had approximately 500,000 POS machines and 70,000 ATMs. About 300,000
merchants in China accept banking cards.

Best Products/Services

There are many opportunities for U.S companies in the credit card market:
* Credit card-related hardware, including POS and ATMs etc.;
* Credit card-related software for banks and merchants;
* Credit, risk and client management software or training programs for banks;
* Disaster back-up system for the banks’ individual credit information database
* Call center related products for banks

Opportunities
The Chinese government is working with relevant industries to advance the development
of the credit card system in China.

In August 2005, the PBOC promulgated the Provisional Rules on Management of Individual
Credit Information Database, which is a milestone in the construction of a national credit
information system. Once activated, the system will play an important role in ensuring
the smooth operation of an individual credit information database and in facilitating the
healthy development of credit card industry in China. Since 2004, efforts have been
made to speed up the construction of an individual credit database on the basis of the
national bank credit registry and inquiry system network. After a successful pilot
operation of the individual credit database was conducted in seven cities in December
2004, the database has since been expanded to cover 127 commercial banks
throughout the country. The network connects four state-owned commercial banks, 12
national joint-stock commercial banks, and 111 city commercial banks. Additionally, two
commercial banks in unidentified cities are currently conducting tests.

China is gearing up to host the Beijing 2008 Olympics Games, an international event that
can help to spur faster growth in the credit card industry. According to the Beijing
municipal government’s credit card development plan, by 2008, 90 percent of business
establishments in Beijing will accept credit cards. Card expenditures will account for 25
percent of total consumption.

The earthquake stroked China in May. Besides the number of death ( over 50,000) , we are also impressed by its open attitude to the outside. In the past, China was known as a country which usually hide many of its reality to the public and only tell what was good to know.

Now it’s different. With the booming economic, China began to learn from the developed countries like USA, UK, France, etc. Obviously this country has realized that accessing the international is the best—actually the only way to grow stronger.

The authorities’ attitude largely inspired overseas investor army to walk straight to this large potential market. The crowded road is said to be the Internet.

Yep, China enjoys around 220 millions Internet users by the end of Feb. 2008, surpassing the US.

Many western investor wonder, might Internet be a good beginning to go?

From my point of view, both big and small companies are right to do this.  Let’s discuss the smaller ones.

There are already some Ebay sellers who tried to sell their characteristic goods to the whole world, including those in China—-you may sea numerous of Chinese Tang clothes, Tibet silver earrings and such. Such kind of websites do provides sellers to break through the distance . But what about the language? There are about 23% Chinese are learning English, but how many do you think they can understand except “bye” and “Hi”?  The attractive description and charming phrases are just in vain. Moreover, they have their own transaction webs like Taobao (http://www.taobao.com) or Paipai (http://www.paipai.com), why do they need to buy through an English web with unfamiliar language?!

Speaking of selling, advertising is always essential. Baidu, known as the China’s google, earns enormous sums of money from its  ad services like bid ranking services and so on. However, the same with the other top Chinese business website, Baidu does not offer ad services for people in countries except China and Japan. Transaction cannot be made by USD, staffs speaks Chinese or Japanese… its ignorance stopped us.

The last but not the least, some business in the US are not visible mainly because Many foreign businesses’ websites are not accessible in China and Baidu normally does not include foreign businesses’ websites in its search results.

But, how can we stop entering a market which will largely benefit us by all the above? What we need is someone to change our ads into Chinese in order to make them better understood (or make one suitable for the local market) , someone to help us find some hot Chinese websites e.g. Baidu (http://www.baidu.com), Sina (http://www.sina.com), 163 (http://www.163.com) to promote the goods, someone offers services in USD, the last and the most important: someone offers such services in a reasonable price. After all it’s not that practical to enquire some personal or small firms to put a large fee on advertising.

Is there anyone meet all the above?

What about AC-Baidu (http://www.ac-baidu.com) ? Its name is interesting, I think the complete one should be “Access-Baidu”.  I found it when writing this article. The basis of the AC-Baidu co. lies in the US, detecting the needs of many local investors, they build up AC-Baidu aiming at improving China-America business in different industries.

It says that telecommunication industry, mechinary industry, aviation and aerospace industry, electronic industry, service business, mechanical industry, credit card industry, service business are hot in China, so these are the special fields Ac-Baidu trying to let its customers to know.

by Caroline McCarthy

U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama appears in cartoon form on the logo of Chinese search engine Baidu.

(Credit: Baidu)

Chinese-language search engine Baidu has an unusual new mascot atop its home page: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A cartoon version of Obama is depicted next to a donkey, the Democratic party emblem. He’s holding a net as though casting it, and attached to the end of the net is a computer mouse–get it? It’s the Internet.

This is part of a “person of the month” feature that Baidu has instituted since November, the blog Shanghaiist explains. Each month, Baidu selects a real-life or fictional personality who has ranked high in its search queries. As Shanghaiist explains, it’s “a bit like Google Trends meets Time Person of the Year on a monthly basis.” Barack Obama is the sixth installment in the series.

The series is hosted on the domain renwu.baidu.com; “renwu” means “historically important person.”

While the biography of Obama on Baidu is largely celebratory, this is not a formal endorsement of the candidate. It is, however, an endorsement of his Web-savviness. Clicking on the Obama-adorned logo on Baidu redirects to a Chinese-language biography of the candidate and links to various media; the central talking point is Obama’s status as a young politician who has successfully leveraged digital media and the Web to rise to fame. Of particular note, according to his Baidu page, is his speech about race in Philadelphia that soared to the YouTube stratosphere after appearing on television earlier.

But of more local relevance, the Baidu site about Obama also highlights the high volume of Chinese search queries for both Obama and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Charts and graphs detail politics-related searches both Chinese and international. There are also information resources pertaining to what the U.S. presidential election means to China, and what Chinese citizens think about it.

“State and world affairs have become the most popular topics of concern for Internet users,” a translation of part of Baidu’s page about Obama reads. It doesn’t seem to mesh particularly well with the Chinese government’s rigid stance on the spread of information, particularly political rhetoric, on the Web.

Nor was it clear whether the Obama campaign would react positively, considering the tense relationship between the U.S. and China. Calls to the campaign’s press office for comment were not immediately returned.

If you are trying to enter the websites below , and if you are sitting under the blue sky of China, you may not be able to even glance at them for a second.

Del.icio.us http://www.del.icio.us.com

Newsvine.com http://www.NewsVine.com

Scribd.com http://www.scribd.com
Technorati http://www.technorati.com

But why? Let’s listen to AC-Baidu’s answer.

For many reasons, foreign businesses often are invisible to China’s 200 million Internet users.

Two major reasons are:

• Many foreign businesses’ websites are not accessible in China. ( Read More )
• Baidu normally does not include foreign businesses’ websites in its search results ( Read More )

Is your business visible in China ? Find out now

Looking back, the road of Baidu was bright, so what about the future?

Jul. 12, 2007 at 12:17pm Eastern by Chris Sherman

An Inside Look At China’s Internet Population

Deborah Fallows, Senior Research Fellow, Pew Internet & American Life Project, has just published a fascinating report detailing the demographics of Chinese internet users. Deb, an American currently living in Shanghai, notes that “there are now an estimated 137 million internet users in China, second in number only to the United States, where estimates of the current internet population range from 165 million to 210 million. The growth rate of China’s internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years.”

The implications of this growth are huge, for the Chinese people and everyone else in the world. This should be a must-read report for both searchers and search marketers alike. An abstract of the report, with a link to the full paper, is here.

———————————————–

Mar. 6, 2007 at 2:49pm Eastern by Chris Sherman

Report: Google Gaining, But Baidu Still Dominates In China

Reporting from the Fourth Annual Piper China Growth Conference, analyst Safa Rashtchy says that China-based search engine Baudu continues to dominate in market share for both organic and paid listings, but apparently Google’s increased investments in China are paying off. Baidu also believes the opportunity in Japan will be significant longer term and they believe they have local market advantage vs. U.S. players. Video sharing sites are also seeing strong momentum, though there is no clear leader in China as yet.

                                                                                                             From http://searchengineland.com