The event we spoke at was the annual Youth Assembly at the United Nations. About 600 youth leaders from 35 countries attended the event. Our talk was simultaneously translated into 6 languages. The topic was how to build an empowering project, from words to action.
 

There is always a high turn over of staff in China where a younger generation is often highly transient and looking for the next role that pays just a few extra RMB.. or so I thought. This was clearly my view before I started to dig around and explore this stereotype more further. After hearing from my team at SinoTech Group about the core reasons for choosing to stay or leave a company I was quite dubious that I maybe hearing the answer I wanted to hear and not the candid ones I needed as a manager looking to improve hiring and retention policy.

This week we saw the yet another marketing event being held in Beijing. This one, simply called, "Marcom Beijing 2010"was billed on their website as "the first international conference with exhibition on marketing and advertising covering the whole value chain of the marketing & advertising industry. It is designed to become the premier annual meeting place of media professionals from all over China and abroad".
 

Social Networking Sites (SNS) have attracted a huge amount of money, both from venture capital and more established corporate budgets, especially from the media industry. The primary Internet business model for content and social media services is advertising so for us marketers wanting to get the best outcomes for our clients; we must recognize and leverage evolving online user behaviors of these sites  – both in terms of audience demographics, depth of engagement and location of discussion. 
 

I bet if I asked the average Australian about Telstra spending 100's millions of dollars and owning a number of Chinese online publishers, many would be completely unaware if not completely surprised. Ask me about this strategy and I would say that on the surface this approach has merits and sound approach....

If we needed more conviencing that the advertising market in China is taking off then look no further than the published results from CTR Market Research.  They are suggesting that advertising expenditure has grown 17 per cent to US$41 billion in the first half of the year for China. This growth percentage for the first six months is the highest in four years.

What is the single most important action you can take to improve your chances of success in implementing a social media campaign?
 
Arguably, leveraging a well-researched and carefully thought out social media marketing process, which lays the foundation for executing a social media campaign. Although there is many social media process maps floating around in the Internet, few provide for an effective social media marketing strategy and guidance on execution combined with optimization & measurement.
 

There seems to be an inevitable feeling to news out that Focus Media has entered into a definitive share purchase agreement to sell a 62% of its Internet subsidiary, Allyes Online Media Holdings Ltd. From my opinion, the news has been a long time coming as it seems Allyes seemed to loose it's way about a year or so ago and I could imagine that the parent company would be looking for an exit.
 

Dear DMIC members,

We are in the final testing phase of our new social media site for digital marketers. I would welcome you, this community to come and take a look at this SNS and offer us some suggestions and feedback on this new site.

The purpose for this new socially orientated community is to provide a place for us in digital marketing to develop more meaningful connections with others and develop a culture of sharing best practices and even some war stories.

It was interesting to read about the Google display advertising agreement with Omnicom Media Group (OMG) this week. Basically Google will assist OMG in building a “trading desk” to facilitate ad buying through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.
 

The was bound to be a major shake up in the online travel sector... Only a few weeks ago, Google announced an agreement to acquire ITA Software, a Cambridge airlines and online travel agency and now here in China the Chinese airlines announced that they were slashing commissions to travel agents.
 

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.
 

From May 1st to October 31st, the Universal Exposition (“World’s Fair”) held in Shanghai will be the largest ever.
 
A hundred million people are expected on the site’s 5.28 sq. km which extends over both shores of Huangpu River. The visitors will explore the pavilions built around the theme “Better City, Better Life” by the 192 countries that are taking part in the expo. The public, which is estimated to consist almost entirely of Chinese visitors, will probably beat all preceding records.
 

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).
 

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.
 

I guess most of us have been staying up late here in China to watch the World Cup soccer games over this past week or so .. it's not like you can escape the event. The images of players kicking goals are everywhere; from TV commercials to bus stops to Internet banner ads... absolutely everywhere. Moreover, it's not just the official World Cup sponsors but it seems every Brand....
 

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").
 
 

In another move that marks a continuing change in China's online travel sector is the entry of Taobao.com into the mix. They have reportedly entered the online travel channel by launching a new site called, "Tao Lvyou".
 
Through the integration of Taobao's quality tourism product sellers, the new channel has four service functions, which are air tickets, hotel bookings, travel services, and destination information, respectively. Using social media as a guide, the site will allow consumers to comment and rank online travel businesses.

Did you know that in China we are have a National Eye Health Day (9th June 2010)? Truthfully, not something I had ever thought about nor knew existed. And, what does this have to do with digital marketing?
 

Online and mobile advertising revenues are continuing to increase in China, with this positive trend likely to accelerate over the rest of this year. According to estimates from iResearch, the media monitoring specialist, internet advertising spend in China reached a value of 6.4bn yuan ($936.9m) in the first quarter of 2010.