BEIJING, China September 16, 2008—Dr Mathew McDougall, chief executive officer and executive chairman of SinoTech Group, today announced the appointment of Tim Haynes, as chief digital officer for SinoTech Group. Prior to this role, Haynes had held positions at various agencies including the Tomorrow Group, a Hong Kong based agency where he lead the interactive practice and has previously worked in Australia and the UK.

“Tim is a visionary and an innovator, as well as a smart businessman – as his success growing SinoTech Group in Shanghai demonstrates,” said Dr Mathew McDougall. “Tim brings to SinoTech Group those essential qualities, plus a keen marketing sense and a strong reputation in the digital universe. He will use his talent and ability to further extend the SinoTech Group as a digital powerhouse.”

“Digital was viewed more as a channel in the past, where the creative process, the ideation process, started at the beginning more with the traditional side of the business, and digital would be one way you can execute,” Haynes says. “Now, both the agency and clients realize that digital is not just a channel. It’s really changed the whole marketing process. I will use SinoTech Group’s extensive digital offerings to bring full interactive solutions to our clients and partners.”

Beijing, China— 27th August 2008: Chinese leading interactive technology and digital marketing company SinoTech Media (www.sinotechmedia.com.cn) announced today that they have signed a partnership agreement with IT168 (www.it168.com), one of the largest information platform for IT products in China. SinoTech Media will act as the exclusive ad agency for the unsold advertising space and international traffic in the website of www.it168.com.

IT168.com is one leading website providing individual netizens and enterprisers with mainstream information on the IT products and IT business.

This new agreement will provide SinoTech Media with the rights to promote and sell targeted advertising for the website www.it168.com. Further, IT168 will license their Ad Technology from SinoTech Media for ad serving and web analytics. This ad technology, known as SinoAnalytics will serve all the advertising needs under the agreement.

Ms. Wang Xiaojie, VIP Account Director of IT168 said, “We are excited to have SinoTech Media help us drive our international advertising revenue. I also believe their Advertising technology will help us manage these advertising campaigns more efficiently.”

Moreover, Dr. Mathew McDougall; the Group CEO and Executive Chairman for SinoTech Group said, “I am pleased that SinoTech media has this opportunity to provide advertising site representation to the largest IT information website in China. This deal will help our publishing partners more effectively monetize traffic and provide our advertisers to the right audience in Chinese IT industry.”

BEIJING, CHINA 20th August 2008- SinoTech Group (www.sinotechgroup.com.cn) announced today that they have signed a strategic partnership with US based Advantix Media.

Texas based, Advantix Media provides Search Marketing services to well known customers in verticals markets such as automotive, education and travel. “This is an exciting strategic partnership.” said Dr. Mathew McDougall, the Group CEO and Executive Chairman for SinoTech Group, “SinoTech will benefit by providing products and services into the US through this partnership. We will provide Advantix’s clients with access to the Asian markets and will conduct Agency Services, Search Marketing and creative services.”

“Asia is a rapidly developing online market, particularly China, so this partnership will extend our online marketing and advertising solutions offering into Asia Pacific; however, China will be the first market we will focus on and we expect to gain quick wins” continued John Phillips, co-founder and Principal.

SinoTech Group is attending the Search Engine Strategies event in San Jose, US this week. Both Dr Mathew McDougall and Laker Chen will attend the conference as well as meet with prospective partners.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) is the leading global conference & expo series that educates delegates on search engine marketing (SEM), including optimization (SEO) and advertising strategies, tactics and best practices.

Over the course of this week, this blog will track the sessions and highlight some of the speakers.

Its time for Yahoo! to launch a new product on the http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/.

Its Yahoo! Fire Eagle (Beta)
Yahoo released its Fire Eagle location-based social networking platform from beta, opening the technology to developers and the public. Fire Eagle allows users to update their various social networking profiles with information about where they are.

What is Fire Eagle?

According to Yahoo! The tool is of great use if you ( developer) Want to make your website or mobile application more relevant or responsive to a user’s location? Or maybe you’ve found a way to capture user location and want to find cool uses for this info? By doing the heavy lifting for you and connecting you to a community of geo-developers, Fire Eagle makes it easier to build location-aware services.

The Open API tool (Fire Eagle) is of great help to the developers or publishers to gain location information about the end user.
Fire Eagle and the Fire Eagle Developer APIs:

Fire Eagle is a new service designed to make it safe and easy to build and use location-aware applications and services. It’s a place where users can store and manage information about their current location that trusted apps and sites can update or access.

Fire Eagle exposes a rich set of web services that allow developers to write location-aware applications.

Update anywhere:
- Send updates from your phone
- Update from your favorite sites
- Do it automatically or manually

Choose what to share:
- You control your data
- You choose who to share with

Have fun on the web:
- Show your location on your blog
- Share it with your friends
- Discover cool stuff around you
- You choose how much to share

Fire Eagle is a mobile search application in the making and its up to the creativity of the developers to make a good use of it!

The IAB released an announcement that they have released a new benchmark study which suggests that online publishers are increasingly turning to sales intermediaries known as ad networks to sell off excess inventories. The use of “ad networks” surged from 5% of total ad impressions sold in 2006 to 30% in 2007, according to this newly released “Digital Pricing Benchmarking Study”.

The report stated that the reasons for the rapid growth in the use of ad networks is two-fold:

• Lack of adequate pricing tools and inventory management discipline contributed to the growth in available ad space. This is causing publishers to seek out ways to sell large inventories of unsold ads. Publishers often lack basic information on realized prices and inventory sold by client and channel, limiting management’s ability to make effective decisions.

• Large marketers continue to shift significant portions of their advertising budgets online and view ad networks as an effective way to achieve greater buying scale and drive down CPMs.

Another important finding of the study is that publishers who actively manage and use multiple ad networks can achieve higher revenues on display ads sold via networks. The benchmarking study finds publishers vary in their adoption of ad networks, the approaches used and the results attained but overall finds that the keys for success for online publishers are having dedicated staff, better tools and metrics that allow constant vigilance in managing ad pricing, reported sell rates and channel conflicts.

To view the complete study, please go to www.iab.net/digital_pricing_research.

Beijing, China— 7th August 2008: Chinese leading interactive technology and digital marketing company SinoTech Media (www.sinotechmedia.com.cn) announced today it entered into a partnership agreement with Redgate Media, a leading integrated media and entertainment company in China. SinoTech Media will act as the sole and exclusive ad agency in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for the sale of advertising space in the streaming radio channels operated by Redgate Media and its partners. 

Redgate Media is a one-stop shop for advertisers in China. Redgate Media reaches a nationwide audience through radio, television, outdoor display advertising, and the fixed mobile Internet.

Through this agreement, SinoTech Media gains the rights to promote and sell targeted advertising for the streaming radio channels of Redgate Media, and Redgate Media will use SinoTech Media’s leading ad serving system SinoXpress and SinoAnalytics to serve all the advertising placed under the agreement. SinoTech Media will provide advertising site representation on QQ.com, a site where Redgate Media streams live radio through a cooperation with Tencent Holdings, the operator of QQ.com.  

“There is no doubt that this partnership between SinoTech Media and Redgate Media will benefit both companies, “ said Ms. Louise Lu, the President - Radio of Redgate Media said. She continued, “SinoTech Media will help us monetize the domestic traffic but also using their technologies, the international traffic as well.  We have been very impressed with the way SinoTech Media has worked with us to date and confident we will continue to cooperate further in the future.”

Further, Dr. Mathew McDougall, Group CEO and Executive Chairman of SinoTech Group said, “I am pleased that SinoTech Media has today become the sole and exclusive ad agency for Redgate Media’s streaming radio offering. This model to integrate both radio and digital advertising into a single channel is an exciting prospect and an opportunity that has not been fully realized here in China. This deal marks a turning point in China for integrated campaigns.”

Beijing, China – 18^th July 2008 - SinoTech Group (www.sinotechgroup.com.cn), today announced its online learning group, will begin providing formal certification of training to search engine marketing (SEM) agencies, effective July 1, 2008. Further, DMS the largest integrated internet media, advertising, and technology group in Southeast Asia has successful achieved the first Gold Seal for Search Marketing.

Our SEO/SEM firm, SinoTech Search is a pre-eminent Search Marketing organization and has developed best practices in all aspects of search engine marketing and advertising. This certification process is a natural extension of this will provide interactive agencies that participate in our program with a means of showing they are up to speed on current SEM strategy,” says Dr Mathew McDougall, Group CEO and Executive Chairman.

In announcing the first Agency to successful achieve a Gold Seal, Dr McDougall said, “It is pleasing to see Agencies embrace this certification as it is better for all companies in Asian SEM/SEO to want to improve practices and skills”.

 “We love the idea of certification. The demand for search engine marketing and optimization continues to increase as marketers realize that when it comes to ROI, it is second only to email. Certification provides our agency New Media with yet another means of competitive differentiation,” says Grant Watt’s, CEO for DMS - the largest integrated internet media, advertising, and technology group in Southeast Asia.

“Agencies need to have a consistently high level of search knowledge in order to deliver the results their clients demand and the SinoTech Group Search Marketing exam is a great way to measure both basic and high-level knowledge, specific to the practices here in Asia. Having a certification seal adds real value,” says Mr Watts.

“The certification program are open to all search engine marketing, advertising, public relations, and interactive marketing agencies – basically any firm that needs to know best practices in search engine marketing in order to serve their customers well,” says Dr McDougall.

Agencies can qualify for the formal certification after 20 percent of their search marketing staff successfully passes the online exam. The exam has a pass level of 62% or higher in order to qualify for certification, explains Amy Dong, SinoTech’s Marketing Director.  

“In doing market research and talking to agencies we found a real desire to have an ‘instant differentiator,’ a seal of excellence that would help an agency distinguish itself against the competition by showing that a significant number of its employees are highly trained and skilled in search engine marketing” Ms Dong explains. “Agencies told us they liked the idea of certification, given the strong reputation of SinoTech Group in this area we have provided a measure to set high standards. 

Benefits
SinoTech Group is offering a Gold Seal level certification for agencies in which 20% to 49% of their search marketing employees pass the exam. There is also a Platinum Seal level for 50% or more employee participation and certification. Each agency application costs RMB250 and is valid for one year, after which agencies can re-apply. If there is turnover or attrition, agencies will participate in required additional training to maintain the minimum 20% employee participation requirement. 

Once an agency is certified, they will get a seal in electronic GIF form that they may use on their websites, blogs, email programs and other interactive media.

BEIJING, CHINA 17th June 2008- SinoTech Media vowed to take a bigger share of the Chinese advertising market. In a logical step toward that goal, it is now giving advertisers demographic data to help them target their messages within their ad network known as ‘SinoNetwork’.
The data, provided free to customers of SinoNetwork advertising network, come from the actual websites themselves and is randomly verified using Web Analytics and interview data. The information enables customers to find lists of Web sites, using criteria such as age, sex and income, that appeal to specific groups of people.
“It will enable advertisers to be more selective in the types of sites they want their ads appearing on,” says Dr Mathew McDougall, Group CEO & Executive Chairman for SinoTech Group.
There is no doubt that SinoTech Media is benefiting from the siphoning of ad dollars from offline media to the Web. According to a report by Internet consultant iResearch Inc, China’s market in online advertising surged by 75 percent to 10.6 billion yuan (1.48 billion U.S. dollars) in 2007. However, these statistics don’t tell the whole story, though.
Companies are far more selective than they used to be about how they spend their money, according to advertising-industry executives. They want their messages to be targeted to as specific a demographic group as possible.
“Now that the advertising dollars are going up, the tools that allow people to use that kind of information are getting that much better,” says Mike Pereira, COO for SinoTech Media.
SinoTech Media’s international rivals are heeding the demographics message, too. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! have also began offering demographic targeting.
“It’s always been part of our product road map,” continued Mr Pereira. “We find it’s going to be useful for both large advertisers as well as for small advertisers. The notion of reaching your audience is the same.”
SinoTech Media will no doubt add additional services over the coming months to attract advertisers as competition from rivals continues to intensify.