Online advertising revenue in China beats newsprint for 2011

In 2011, China's online advertising revenue exceeded newsprint advertising revenue for the first time ever, as more advertisers began looking toward Web media platforms in areas such as search engines, along with e-commerce and video websites, according to a report from Beijing-based market research firm iResearch.

The country's Web advertising market maintained a growth momentum during 2011, which generated revenue of 51.19 billion yuan (US$8.11 billion), surpassing the 45.36 billion yuan from newspaper advertising, said the iResearch report, which also predicted that Web advertising will continue to increase its lead over newspaper advertising in 2012.

China's surging online advertising market has been a boon for advertising platform providers, which have growingly tapped into the country's advertising market spurred on by the rapid growth of the economy as well as favorable polices, said Wu Youping, general manager of iClick Interactive Asia Ltd, a leading online marketing provider in Asia.

Aiming to strengthen its foothold in China, iClick launched a new Cross-Marketplace Optimization Platform for the Chinese market late last year, in a move to take on digital advertising giants in the market such as Google. According to the iResearch report, Baidu, Taobao, and Google were the three largest advertising platform providers last year in terms of revenue gained from advertising.