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It is being widely reported that the China’s growth in online advertising continues at a quick pace. AC Neisen has come out and said that this spending reached 4.06 billion RMB in the first quarter of 2010—a 52.7% increase over the same period in 2009. This trend is expected to continue for the remainder of the year. The Fashion industry was the top spender, with almost 18% market share. Half of the top 10 industries lost market share in the first quarter.

In 2010, China's ad investment growth is projected to reach 11 percent, making China the fourth-biggest advertising market after the U.S., Japan and German

In what seems obvious to most of us working in the digital marketing space have noticed that this year's revenue is good.. actually very good. So news out today suggesting that global ad spending will increase by 3.5% this year to $451 billion and 4.5% in 2011 to $471 billion is not that surprising. This is the forcasts from GroupM (remembering only 6 months ago they were predicted only 1% growth for this year).

The GroupM forecast supports the upgraded ZenithOptimedia global advertising spending predictions for the next three years. ZenithOptimedia is predicting total increases of 2.2%, 4.1% and 5.3%, respectively. It also predicted Internet ad spending will take a greater portion of ad expenditures in the next three years. So after reading these forcasts I am smiling and I rubbing my hands together expecting a growing SinoTech Group over the next years.

Twitter hits $1 billion valuation within 3 years. Facebook reached equal valuation with 2 years. Groupon, however, broke the record, it only takes a year and a half. On April 19th of this year, a consortium, led by DST (a Russian investment company), invested $135 million on Groupon, making the valuation of Groupon shoot up to $1.35 billion. As New York Times said, Groupon was the craziest the Internet company in history.

The business model in Groupon is that it only sales one product or service per day, and via daily updating and bulk-discount price, Groupon is able to attract mass purchasers and then, collect 50% of the transaction commission in return. Groupon creates a new Internet business model consists of e-commerce, social marketing and online ads.

Seems yet another company is being established to exploit the growing Chinese e-commerce sector. Today, I was interested to note a new joint venture established by Baidu and the Japanese e-commerce operator Rakuten (called "Le Ku Tian").

These are both Internet powerhouses in their own right and this combination may be the start of an interesting period in e-commerce or given the size of these companies and their respective aspirations may turn out to be more buzz than real sucsess. But an interesting combination neathertheless and certainly as digital marketers, we will have much to see from a Branding, positioning and execution (marketing) perspective.