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CR-Nielsen has found that revenue for digital advertising campaigns in China reached US$223.9 million in July of this year, denoting a year-on-year boost of nearly 37 per cent.

This is great news for those of us working in the digital marketing space in China…. not that everyone is seeing this percentage increase but it certainly reconciles with the increasing activity I am seeing from both our agency partners and advertisers we are directly working with.

According to the CR-Nielsen report, China’s top digital advertising industries are entertainment, which holds 18 per cent digital ad market share; automobile, with 16 per cent; and fashion, with 10 per cent share.

July’s revenue figures reflected increased online spend from advertisers in areas such as retail, entertainment and personals from June. Yet spend was down in July in industries including fashion, by nearly 37 per cent; electronics, with a decrease of nearly 14 per cent; and real estate, which fell 12 per cent.

Below is a chart (source: CR-Nielsen) that shows the number of Advertisers, the number of campaigns and the number of creatives for 2008/2009 by quarter. Some interesting stats. I do question why we see a slight increase in the number of advertisers and campaigns but are getting much greater spend by the advertisers… I am assuming this means that the overall campaign spends are higher.

The highest spending advertising sectors (as determined by this report) are; fashion automobiles, computers, electronic products and FMCG (fast moving consumer goods).

I am waiting to get a number of other research datapoints and see if these stats and assumptions are validated further. However, most would agree we are seeing an improvement (size) with digital marketing budgets.