Advertising Network AdChina Raises $10 Million

Shanghai-based ad net AdChina has secured a $10 million first round funding led by Mayfield China. The year-old company also has received unspecified angel funding from Jack Xu, a VP at Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) and eBay's (NSDQ: EBAY) former VP of engineering. Chinese ad firms of all sizes are gearing up for the Beijing Summer Olympics, which is expected to generate roughly $1.5 billion in ad revenue (earlier this year, Lehman Brothers internet analyst Doug Anmuth forecast about $70 million of those revenues going to online).

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The China Business Network

A superb China Business resource is Christine Lu's China Business Network, which features very current and timely interviews with many business leaders in China as well as perspectives on doing business in China's explosive but sometimes culturally confuing business environments.

One of the best aspects of this website is how accessible Christine Lu is to readers and China watchers. A very regular blogger and Twitter participant, Christine is often online and her insightful comments, current news bits, and good connections offer excellent reading for those interested in the world of China Business dealings.

Doing Business in China?

Home from two weeks in China I'm still struggling to digest the business bits I took away from the experience. I had a very enjoyable dinner meeting with two internet startup entrepreneurs in Shanghai. One is starting a series of Startup and Entrepreneur meetings in Beijing called "BASE" which will help introduce new startups and entrepreneurs working in the Beijing area.

Initially, the single most striking aspect of China to me was how many workers would be assigned to tasks that in the west are generally done with machines or by a single person. Businesses seem to throw people at jobs, rather than innovation and technology, though I'm hardly experienced enough to generalize about this yet.

I found this video interview of Beijing filmmaker Siok Siok Tan who has a great introduction suggesting how one should approach learning about China business, which clearly happens in a different context than what most westerners generally expect:

Stock Tops Sex For Google China

Amongst the top searches on Google China in 2007 was "stock" followed by searches for three banks. "Sex" did not make the cut whereas in many other countries around world, it is a top searched keyword. This is being attributed to the Chinese government's strict controls over online content and porn.

"On the Chinese mainland, it was money and technology that took the honours last year" according to the China Daily newspaper.

Topping the list was "QQ", an IM service and a brand of car, followed by China Merchants Bank, ICBC, Stock, Game, China Construction Bank, Google Earth, Thunder, Kaspersky, and MSN.

According to Reuters, in another list named "qiu zhi", or "seeking knowledge", "what is a blue chip" and "how to invest in the stock market" were the most searched questions on Google in China, while "what is love" and "how to kiss" ranked top of the global list.

China's Online Population Explosion

Hot off the research block, the Pew/Internet Research Group has published a report yesterday which indicates that China's internet population of 137 million is growing at a faster rate and is expected to outpace that of the U.S.'s of 165 to 210 million in a few years. This is not suprising considering the population of China which is at 1.3B compared to the U.S.'s at 300M.

There are many implications of this notwithstanding the impact on site globalization requirements for more and more companies wanting to do business in the lucrative Chinese market. The upside is that the "Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues..." (Source: Pew http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/218/report_display.asp). What is potentially trickier is understanding the social, political, and cultural nuances in the usage of language translation, color, metaphors, and imagery. I also recently read somewhere that China is expected to surpass India in the outsourcing arena as well.

Read the report (pdf).