trip.taobao.com

Taobao Trip, a section on Taobao.com dedicated to travel related products including air tickets, hotel booking, tour packages and etc, announced that their total transactions in 2011 exceeded 10 billion yuan (CNY 10.9 billion or USD 1.73 billion).

About 67% of total sales on Taobao Trip (CNY 7.3 billion or USD 1.16 billion) were air tickets in 2011; the highest single day air ticket sale was on Dec 21 with over 80 thousand tickets sold. The daily air tickets sales in China is about 700K with about 200K sold online, which means about 40% of total air ticket were sold on Taobao Trip.

Taobao Trip was launched in May 2010 selling domestic and international air tickets, hotels, tour packages, attraction tickets, cruise, car rental and daily deals.

Also read:: Taobao Sales during Golden Week Reached 8 Billion RMB

Total transactions of China’s B2C market reached 240.07 billion yuan (USD 38.03 billion) in 2011, with an increase of over 130% compared to 2010.

Source: EnfoDesk, Analysis International

Also read:: China Q1 Online Payment Exceeded 212 Billion Yuan

According to iResearch, China internet advertising total revenue reached 51.19 billion yuan (USD 8.11 billion) in 2011, up 57.3% from 2010 and exceeding total newspaper print ad revenue by 45.36 billion yuan.

iResearch forecasts total internet advertising revenue would exceed 100 billion yuan next year (2013).

Also read:: China Online Advertising Summary in Q1 2010

Total revenue of China search engine market last year reached 18.78 billion yuan, up 11.7% from 2010. Baidu leads search engine market with a market share of 76.1% by revenue while Google’s down to 19.8%. Sogou and Soso expanded their market share to 2.3% and 1.4% respectively.

Also read:: Charts: China 2011 Q2 Search Engine Market Update

China Online Payment Market Size 2006-2015e

China’s third party online payment continues to maintain strong growth in 2011 with an estimated total transaction exceeding 2 trillion yuan (2,203.8 billion yuan or USD 349 billion), up 118%.

China Online Payment Market Share in 2011

Alipay is still the dominant player in China’s online payment with 49% market share, followed by Tenpay and China Pay. Online shopping in China continued rapid growth in 2011, reaching 800 billion yuan.

Also read:: China Q1 Online Payment Exceeded 212 Billion Yuan

Social Feature in Baidu Search Results

Baidu is found been testing Google +1 like features in its search results pages, like the screenshot shown above. A thumb up icon is displayed with a number in SERPs beside the display URL, like the Facebook Like box.

Visit this link (“Baidu”) or this one (“Guge”, Google’s Chinese brand name) or this (“Sogou”) to have a live view. I tested some keywords and only found keywords related to search engine brand terms that triggers this social icon.

You must be wondering where this number comes from. Baidu does not have Google+ like social network but they launched a social sharing tool called “Baidu Share” last June. This number indicates the number of times a web page is shared using Baidu Share, according to Baidu’s official post at Sina Weibo.

Baidu Share is not the most popular social bookmarking service in China; not yet. The “leak” of this social feature could be an indication of Baidu’s intention to boost the adoption of Baidu Share more broadly and rapidly. I think this feature may take months before official launch.

Also read:: Top 10 Keywords in China 2009: Baidu V.S. Google

Baidu Encyclopedia Digital Museum

You can click the map tab, select the region and view a list of museums. You can then click on the museum’s name to view its collection, or visit its Baidu Encyclopedia entry. So far, only collections from six museums are available.

Also read:: Baidu Launched New Homepage with Modules

As you can see in the above search trend graph, car rental business is taking off in China. 

Top 10 Car Rental Websites by Visits

Top 10 Car Rental Websites by Visits Marketshare

According to data released by Hitwise, the top 10 car rental websites in China by visits are:

1. eHI Car Service
2. Zuche.com
3. AVIS China
4. Yongche.com
5. Top1.cn
6. Motorent.cn
7. zuche.17u.cn
8. Reocar.com
9. Hertzchina.com
10. Wodingche.com

eHI Car Services websites is leading the online car rental business in China according to Hitwise; but, I doubt it considering Shenzhou Car Rental (zuche.com) is much more popular according to Baidu search trend data:

AVIS is doing better than Hertz with a more localized website and a Chinese brand name.

Also read:: Market Share of China Microblogging Websites in Q1 2011

Ratio of Visits: Sina Weibo v.s. Twitter

Sina Weibo accounted for 1 in every 158 Internet visits in China last April. And, it’s growing very fast as shown above according to Hitwise data. This means that Sina Weibo accounted for about 1 in every 100 Internet visits in China, a platform marketers shouldn’t ignore in the overall digital marketing strategies.

Also check out top 10 retweeted users on Sina Weibo and Twitter, a study by HP.

Also read:: Sina Weibo Much More Dominant in China Internet Than Twitter in US

Flight Info in Baidu Search Results

When a user searches on Baidu using “flight number”?she can view the real-time flight status on top of the search results like the screenshot shown above. Similarly, it works for train and some coach services.

The flight and train data are from Qunar, in which Baidu strategically invested $306 million last June.

Actually Baidu has started integrated some of the Qunar services into its search results. For example, when a user searches for flight from Beijing to Shanghai, she will be shown this search box and price trend:

Flight search and trend on Baidu SERP

Also read:: Baidu Map Integrates Real Time Search

According to Nielsen’s report on Hong Kong digital behavior, 87% of Hong Kong consumers have used the Internet in the past 12 months, compared to neighboring markets such as Singapore (67%), Malaysia (38%), Thailand (31%), Philippines (30%) and Indonesia (19%).

Internet usage in Hong Kong is particularly high among those aged 12 to 44 with over nine in ten accessing the Internet on a monthly basis.

Device Ownership in Hong Kong

The top three application on mobile phones and tablets in Hong Kong are search, email and news.

Also read:: China Internet Usage Led by Web Portals as Social Networking Remains Smaller Segment of the Market

The user IDs, passwords and email addresses of more than 6 million accounts registered on CSDN were leaked two weeks ago. You may want to check whether your account is already a public secret using Am I Hacked.

However, Chinese banks will benefit from this attack as China Ministry of Public Security now requires that leading search engine companies show the links of five state-owned banks at the top of every search page.

This means no matter how unfriendly the sites of banks are to the search engines, they will be shown on the top of search results page of the top ten Chinese search engines.

Also read:: Be A Baidu Wikipedia “Authority Editor” for Branding and SEO Benefit

Top 10 China B2C Websites in 2011 by Growth of Orders

According to iResearch, the fastest growing B2C website in 2011 by total number of orders is womai.com (owned by China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation; or, COFCO), followed by vjia.com (owned by VANCL) and yaodian100.com.

Also read:: Charts: China’s Top 10 B2C Websites in Q2 2011

Weibo Private Posting

Sina Weibo has just launched a new feature to allow users to publish private posts. As shown in the above screen capture, users can either publish publicly or privately with a simple selection.

Users don’t have much control on this “privacy setting” as they either allow everything to see their posts or make it private and only owners or the posts can see.

Also read:: Sina Weibo Launched Analytics Tool

Baidu Open Beta Platform

Baidu officially released its Open Beta Test Platform last Tuesday, a convenient “one-stop shop” for users interested in participating the latest Baidu products testing.

Upon signing in, users will discover a personal center, a mission assignment square, an on-the-spot survey column, a gifts center, and an accomplishment column. Users can click on the button “receive mission” to begin testing the product right away. New users can find newbie instruction guides and detailed information on the user points accumulation system under the Platform Strategy column, and begin maneuvering effortlessly through the platform in no time.

Internet users can detect bugs, participate in research surveys and take part in various other platform survey functions to win cash prizes, mobile hard disk drives, mobile top-up cards, and Apple products. Hardcore Baidu fans can also choose to redeem points accumulated through participation for Baidu memorabilia such as Baidu mugs and Baidu shoulder bags.

Some of the products and upgrades currently available for testing include Baidu Mobile Map, Baidu Search,  English labeling function and synonyms labeling function.

Baidu Open Beta Test Platform will certainly help in Baidu’s product development process and  the Chinese IT industry as other leading IT companies may follow and launch similar platforms.

Also read:: Baidu Launched Connect Open Platform

Beijing Municipal government announced Regulations of Microblog Development today. Micrblogging websites in Beijing city administrative area and their users should comply with the regulations.

The regulation requires microblog users to register their identities with authorities and forbids creating fake Weibo accounts.

Also read:: Sina Weibo Much More Dominant in China Internet Than Twitter in US

Top China OTA by Share of Visits

Experian released November data for China’s most visited online travel agencies. Does it surprise you that Qunar is the most visited OTA in China?

Also read:: Chart: Select Digital Media Penetration in China in Q2 2011

Millward Brown released their second annual BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Brands. You can get the PDF here or view a summary below (Internet companies are bolded).

Baidu, Tencent, Sina, Renren, Ctrip and Sohu are the six Internet companies that made it to the Top 50 most valuable Chinese brands; Baidu (6) and Tencent (10) are even in the top 10. 

BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Brands in China

1. China Mobile
2. ICBC (Bank)
3. China Construction Bank
4. Bank of China
5. Agricultural Bank of China
6. Baidu
7. China Life (Insurance)
8. Sinopec (Oil)
9. PetroChina
10. Tencent
11. China Telecom
12. Ping An (Insurance)
13. Moutai (Alcohol)
14. China Merchants Bank
15. China Unicom
16. Air China
17. Wu Liang Ye (Insurance)
18. Meng Niu (Dairy)
19. CPIC (Insurance)
20. Changyu (Wine)
21. Suning (Electronics retailer)
22. Yili (Dairy)
23. Lenovo
24. China Eastern Airline
25. Sina
26. Yunnan Baiyao (Herbal Remedy)
27. GREE (Air conditioning)
28. China Southern Airline
29. Haier (Home Appliance)
30. Metersbonwe (Casual wear producer and retailer)
31. Midea (Home appliance)
32. Shuanghui (Meat processor)
33. GOME (Electronics retailer)
34. Tsingtao (Beer)
35. Renren
36. Tong Ren Tang (Herbal remedy)
37. Li Ning (Sportswear)
38. Huaxia Bank
39. Snow (Beer)
40. Ctrip
41. Anta (Sportswear)
42. Yan Jing (Beer)
43. Bright (Dairy)
44. 999 (Pharmaceutical)
45. Septwolves (Apparel)
46. Hainan Airline
47. Fulinmen (Cooling oil and rice producer)
48. BYD
49. Sohu
50. 361 (Sportswear)

Also read:: Hurun Most Valuable Chinese Home-grown Brands List 2011

Chinese government agency has announced the public holidays in 2012 last week, which marketers should know for planning:

• New Year’s Day: 1-3 January (3 days), 31 Dec 2011 (Saturday) is a working day
• Chinese New Year: 22-28 January (7 days), Jan 21 (Sat) and Jan 29 (Sun) are working days
• Ching Ming Festival: 2-4 April (3 days), March 31 (Sat) and April 1 (Sun) are working days
• Labor’s Day: 29 April – 1 May (3 days), April 28 (Sat) is a working day
• Dragon Boat Festival: 22-24 June (3 days)
• National Day: 30 September – 7 October (8 days), Sep 29 is a working day

Also read:: 2.556 billion passenger trips during Chinese New Year

Time Spent in Different Media in China by Tiers

Starcom MediaVest Group’s recently conducted a study of users ages 13 to 45 in China and found that internet users aged 19 to 30 spent almost twice as much time online as watching TV.

Time Spent on TV and Video in China by Tiers

Watching videos on computers is the most popular, which accounted for the most time spent by Chinese users except for those in Tier 1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) where mobile devices are the most popular platform for video watching.

Clearly from this Starcom study, China internet users spend more time watching video on their mobile devices and computers than on TV. And, as advertising in TV dramas is banned in China, online video advertising and marketing presents a big opportunity.

Also read:: China to Have over 700 Million Online Video Users by 2015