The rise of mobile brings drastic changes on China’s internet, and becomes the new opportunity and inspiration for marketers to get in touch with the target audience. iClick reviewed some significant changes and concluded with a few practical recommendations for marketers to ride on the emerging digital trends in China.

1. keyword for successful
digital marketing - mobile
2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
COPPYRIGHT © 2014 ICLICK INTERACTIVE ASIA LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

2. 2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
Half of 2014 has gone, but the fast-growing China internet industry has not
stopped evolving. The majority of changes seen relate to a single keyword –
Mobile. This conclusion can be drawn by combining various current statistics:
the popularity of smartphones and tablets, and changes in browsing habits,
social life and shopping among Chinese internet users. Instead of merely
assisting social networking, mobile has grown to assume the leading role in
some platforms, such as news apps and social media.
For insight into these changing trends, iClick’s 2014 Digital Marketing
Midyear Review offers hints to plan your digital marketing strategies ahead.
iClick
2014 . 09
1

3. 2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
change 1: number of chinese mobile internet users surpasses pc users for the first time
In the first half of 2014, a significant change appeared in China’s internet usage - the population of mobile internet users overtook that of PC users for
the very first time. According to CNNIC, there were 527 million mobile internet users in China by the end of June, 270 million users more compared to
figures in 2013. 83.4% of the users accessed the internet via mobile platforms, while only 80.9% used a PC.
tips: As mobile devices become the first choice for consumers to access the internet, the time spent on mobile devices has increased
proportionally, even more than on the PC. Marketers who previously only put effort into digital campaigns for the PC should pay more
attention to this behavioural change in their target audience. Adjust marketing strategies in a timely manner to achieve the most
cost-effective results.
china mobile internet population & % of total internet population devices to access internet in china
78.5% 81.0% 83.4%
500 527
464
72.2% 74.5%
419
388
750 Mobile internet population
65.9% 66.2% 65.5% 69.3%
356
303 318 277
2010.06 2010.12 2011.06 2011.12 2012.06 2012.12 2013.06 2013.12 2014.06
Source: CNNIC, “The 34th China Internet Development Status Report”, 2014.7
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Million
600
450
300
150
0
% of total internet population
2
81.0%
83.4%
81.7%
80.9%
44.1%
43.7%
69.7%
69.6%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Desktop
Laptop
Mobile
Personal Computer
2013.12 2014.06

4. 2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
change 2: social media usage shifts from pc to mobile
According to iResearch, during Feb 2013 to Feb 2014, the monthly time spent on social media apps increased significantly. YoY on mobile devices, for
example, showed an uptick of 255.7%! In contrast, YoY for the PC only rose 2.5%, clearly indicating that social media users spent more time on mobile
devices than on the PC. Among all social media, Weibo and WeChat are the drivers that triggered this increment. The numbers also mean that accessing
social media on the PC has met a bottleneck and become oversaturated. 。
tips: Statistics show mobile users are heavily using social media. Thus, social media on mobile devices must be one of the key
developments for the future of digital marketing. Currently, many brands already have their official accounts on WeChat to promote
their latest offers and establish a better brand image; some of these accounts have netted thousands of active followers since their
establishment. Social media marketing is highly acceptable in consumers’ mindsets.
feb 2013 – feb 2014 monthly time spent on social media via pc/ app feb 2013 – feb 2014 top 5 social apps with longest usage time
2013.02 2013.04 2013.06 2013.08 2013.10 2013.12 2014.02
200,000
160,000
120,000
80,000
WeChat
Sina Weibo
Q zone
Source: iResearch, “2014Q1 Social app traffic surpassed PC for the first time, WeChat is the key driver”, 2014.5
Hours
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
YoY 255.7%
YoY 2.5%
App
PC
3
Hours
40,000
Baidu Tieba
Renren mobile app
0
2013.02 2013.04 2013.06 2013.08 2013.10 2013.12 2014.02

5. 2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
change 3: rising popularity of mobile payment benefits o2o marketing development
Mobile payment was another highlight in the first half of 2014 digital marketing. Based on CNNIC figures, mobile payment users were up from 125
million to 205 million by the end of June, a growth rate 63.4% in only half of a year. Mobile payment directly benefits the evolvement of mobile
shopping. Compared to year end 2013, mobile shoppers increased 42% to 205 million shoppers. Offline businesses can make the most use of mobile
payment, offering complete O2O experiences to consumers; such as calling taxis, restaurant reservation, apparel fittings, expanding the range of
shopping scenarios for potential customers.
tips: O2O business is one of the focuses in the future of digital marketing. It can lead consumers from recognising a brand to
experiencing the product or service, and make the purchase decision - it is a complete cycle of the shopping experience. But how can we
tighten the relationship between advertising and conversions (every dollar spent by consumers) to improve ROI? For example, collecting and
analysing the browsing habits of a target audience, segmenting them, and based on this information, promoting offers to audiences with
similar backgrounds by lookalike targeting, or cross selling similar products to consumers based on their previous choices. Precise analysis and
targeting can effectively shorten the route for consumers from recognising the brand to actual purchase.
4

6. 2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
dec 2013 - jun 2014 online shopping mobile shopping population
and % of total inernet population
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
42.1%
46.2%
260 292
125 205
Source: CNNIC, “The 34th China Internet Development Status Report”, 2014.7
Million
400
300
200
100
0
2013.12 2014.06
Online payment population
Mobile payment population
Online payment population (% of total internet population)
Mobile payment population (% of total internet population)
25.1%
38.9%
5
60%
45%
30%
15%
0%
Million
48.9%
52.5%
28.9%
302 332
144 205
2013.12 2014.06
38.9%
400
300
200
100
0
dec 2013 - jun 2014 online payment/ mobile payment populations
and % of total internet population
Online shopping population
Mobile shopping population
Online shopping population (% of total internet population)
Mobile shopping population (% of total internet population)

7. 2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
change 4: chinese consumers embrace internet financial services and apps
Online wealth management products only just launched about a year ago in China, but it was found that 10%* of total Chinese internet users have
already adopted them, a total of 63.8 million users. In line with the People’s Bank of China’s study, “China financial stability report (2014)”, the value of
China’s internet financial services was RMB10 trillion in 2013, while third party payments were worth over RMB9 trillion, and P2P internet loan worth
more than RMB60 billion.
The boom of internet financial services is due to the long-tail effect of the internet, as well as the convenience of mobile technologies, which lowers
rental costs for manual and physical branches. A lowered entrance fee to enjoy internet financial services has attracted millions of users to take the first
step and experience the products via mobile devices. By gathering assets from millions of users, banks and finance companies are able to develop new
products apart from the traditional savings and banking services; consumers are open to more choices with higher investment returns.
tips: Growth of internet financial services is primed to explode in 2014. As Chinese consumers get used to managing payments and
their personal assets online, the popularity and positive word of mouth will spread to other consumers. Marketers should catch this
opportunity to impress consumers by enhancing the user experience, such as optimising the payment process, offering advanced security
settings, and using responsive design to cater for access from PCs or mobile platforms.
6
Internet financial
services (RMB)
10 Third party payment (RMB) trillion 6trillion
$ 60billion P2P internet loan (RMB)
Source: *CNNIC, “The 34th China Internet Development Status Report”, 2014.7 & The People’s bank of China, “China financial stability report (2014)”, 2014.4

8. 2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
iResearch’s newly published “2014 China mobile advertising industry report” stated that the growth of mobile marketing from 2013 to 2014 was fierce,
and the estimated increment will be 76% by the end of this year. In this uptrend, news and social media on mobile platforms reflect higher advertising
value in ad hoc marketing. Take the 2014 World Cup as an example. Due to the sole broadcast rights of CCTV, other media could not play any live match,
but of course, all marketers wanted to capture a chance that only happens once in 4 years, so they shifted the marketing budget to other media with
instant responses and high consumer involvement – news and social media. According to the source, World Cup-related ad inventories on 163.com
were sold out in April. Extra resources were put into the channel to cater to requests from other marketers. It was more or less the same in other news
media, marketers fought for every ad space to make sure their brands were exposed to as many as mobile users as possible during that period.
tips: Lesson learned from the World Cup event: marketers like to ride on a hot event to get more exposure, especially focusing on news
and social media as users will organically follow these sources, discuss and share the contents, which ultimately benefits brands with free
exposure. On the paid side, news mobile apps possess in-app display ads, push notifications and campaign sponsorship. If any marketer
considers doing campaigns during a hot event period, they can co-hold games with different news channels to capture wider consumer
attention.
127.7
change 5: hot event highlights the value of mobile marketing in china
84.5
76.0% 78.2%
48.7
27.3
153.7%
105.0%
7.6 15.5
160%
120%
73.6% 80%
51.1%
2012 2013 2014e 2015e 2016e 2017e
200%
40%
0%
160
120
80
40
0
Source: iResearch, "2014 China Mobile Advertising Report", 2014.9
7
2012 - 2017 mobile marketing scale in china
China mobile marketing scale (RMB billion) Growth rate (%)

9. conclusion
2014
digital
marketing
midyear
review
8
We can see “mobile” everywhere in the first half of 2014, so it’s clearly a hot term in digital marketing. For marketers working with this
unstoppable trend, what should they plan for and how can they control the digital marketing budget to cover channels with the most target
audiences? iClick has some hints for you.
pick an image-fitting platform on mobile and sensibly allocate your budget on pc and mobile campaigns:
Mobile marketing brings new opportunities and traffic to brands, but how do you convert them? PC and mobile platforms attract consumers with
different characters. Marketers should not ignore either of these platforms when they plan for campaigns. Instead, they need to understand the
characteristics of the target audiences and reasonably allocate their budget between PC and mobile devices, to maximise the results of integrated
marketing.
don’t be afraid to try innovative promotions in order to create a satisfactory mobile experience for consumers:
A good mobile user experience is the prerequisite for successful mobile marketing. It is totally wrong for marketers to use the same strategies as on the
PC; most brands are having a hard time differentiating the switch in user behaviours from mobile to PC. Analysing the time consumers spend on each
platform, their browsing histories and purchase habits, are the keys to changing that user experiences. Marketers can also base campaigns on location
or QR codes to induce O2O interaction with consumers.
reasonably allocate resources between online and offline platforms to make mobile o2o execution practical:
Though mobile ads are in great demand, linking up all the online and offline resources to drive O2O business is still a big question for marketers. The
planning, strategies and design of O2O mobile marketing are different from traditional media. What marketers need is a complete integration of on and
offline, such as adding QR codes to outdoor and print ads, driving consumers to websites, social media or downloads; AR codes to let consumers
experience the products in a more visible way; and displaying banners and SEM in different portals for products and services, facilitating consumers to
download apps or visit e-commerce sites. Mobile marketing should evolve with advanced development technologies, making consumers crave for
demand and proactively get involved in the marketing campaigns.

10. Thank you
Website: i-click.com
Official Weibo: Weibo.com/iclickasia
E-mail: sales_cn@i-click.com
WeChat: iClick_China
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