BEIJING, CHINA 14th October 2008- SinoTech Group announced today that they have signed a strategic agreement with Publicitas Asia Holdings (Publicitas).  This partnership creates a powerful digital partnership in China where SinoTech Group will provide Publicitas a range of digital marketing services and products along with both companies working together to form one of China’s important advertising sales teams representing leading sites in China and abroad.
Specifically, under the terms of the agreement, the SinoTech Group will become the preferred supplier for digital marketing services, ad serving technology for Publicitas in China and extend each others Digital Sales force in China.
“This partnership with SinoTech Group will allow Publicitas the opportunity to further monetize our existing publishers advertising inventories as well as give us new media, products and services we can offer in China said Moritz Wuttke, Chief Executive Officer for Publicitas China.
“We’re immensely excited to work with Publicitas on this deal with such potential,” said Dr Mathew McDougall, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of SinoTech Group. “Along with SinoTech Group’s groups own site representation publishers, we will have much more collective advertising inventory as well as a strong partner to attract advertisers who want to run ads across a number of leading site in China and abroad.
Publicitas will sell into Sinotech’s Digital Media assets in and adopt SinoTech Group’s own technologies such as SinoXpress (ad serving) and SinoAnalytics (web analytics), to be used on some of their existing Chinese publisher sites.

Dr Mathew McDougall, Group CEO & Executive Chairman for SInoTech Group is attending the iMedia Agency summit in Bali.

This is the inaugural Southeast Asian iMedia Agency Summit that will allow us to have the opportunity to rub shoulders with other interactive agency leaders and explore, challenge and build the future of online interactive and digital media, and marketing in the region. The role of the agency in the ever-evolving interactive media space is changing. The notion of iMedia Summits are not new and have been running since 2001. Borne out of the U.S., iMedia has invited agency senior management to these exclusive summits, and within these few days, usually in an intimate resort setting, the senior level executives get to re-examine strategies for their clients and their own businesses, gain a fresh vision of industry trends, and network with peers, senior personnel from publishers and technology service providers.

I am very much looking forward to catching up with a few of my  friends, Gareth Mulryan, David Temple, Cameron Yuil, Robbie Hills to name a few…. also looking forward to meeting new people working in the area of digital advertising.

Cheers

Matt

Dr Mathew McDougall from SinoTech Group (www.sinotechgroup.com.cn) was speaking at the SMX about Search Marketing in China. At the event, the talk was focused on the positive growth in Internet users in China. Collectively, the speakers were promoting that it is now right for marketers to take the plunge and launch digital campaigns in China (search, social etc) The various speakers outlined  positives and negatives for search marketers in China. These positives and negitives were nicely consolidated by Chris Sherman in his post on Search Engine Land. (Listed below for convienience).

Positives:

• China is of the largest markets in the world, with the most online users of any country (~250 million and counting)
• Increasing use of search engines by Chinese internet users
• Comparatively inexpensive options for search marketers in relation to other markets in the world
• Relative lack of sophisticated competition; relative ease of capturing top positions in both organic and paid search result listings

Negatives:

• Relative complexity of Chinese language (and multiple dialects) requires sophisticated knowledge and/or strong partnership with local marketing experts
• Lack of transparency on the part of market leader Baidu requires good relationships with company reps or agencies with good connections
• Lack of maturity in E-commerce poses challenges for direct-response or retail oriented search marketers

In the presentation by Dr McDougall, he spoke about companies now establishing search marketing campaigns in China and increasing looking to expand their budgets and the number of keywords being managed. He used a case study to highlight how one consumer electronics brand is now doing campaigns that have tens of thousands of keywords and there for needs tools and technologies to establish, bid, manage and monitor results/campaigns.

Overall, a great indication that search marketing is alive and well in China. If anyone else was at the event then would be interested in your views and comments.

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 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.