China Media Buying (18)
anybody here tried to purchase media in China and was successful in it
?
From what I understand so far, most of the Chinese websites (unknown / high ranked in Alexa) work on a fix monthly structure. When you ask them for more details about the number of unique visitors or impressions they have in a day, they treat you like a Russian spy who asked them about Mao five years plan 
.
Also, the loading page time period is extremely slow, is it because our servers are located outside or China or China internet firewall or both 
?
We have a X,XXX $ budget 
to spend in China, but not sure if it's worth it..
Ben
Yeah you need a box in Asia or even in China would be fine to host your pages. Never bought media in China so others would have to chime in on that.
Just go with a chinese media buying company instead of contact sites individually?
we are now starting a 1 page site in China and started to work with several ad networks (----not easy---). will update or kill myself (one or the other)..
Seem there a really few offer for CN,and I am chinese.
traffic is really cheap,but have not tried it
Chinese market is like this untapped gold mine, whoever gets in here early will be making a hell of a killing.
Ben, can you give some more details on what you're looking for? Adsame has a large amount of decent inventory and might be a good starting point. Direct to site may end up being more expensive depending on what kind of inventory you want; brands, especially Western brands running large-scale branding campaigns are willing to pay high CPM's for good placements. A lot of the major websites that deal with these brands will typically have a fixed daily or weekly price with a fixed # of impressions or clicks, and will then fudge the numbers to make up any differences, but, it's different for different verticals.
If you're not running PPC or email campaigns, you might want to look into those depending on your product, especially if you're expecting some sort of conversion action. Baidu is a great traffic source and email marketing restrictions are non-existent, so you can list-buy and spam to your heart's content.
China is brutal though
edit: You need a local server. If you don't get one in the mainland, Singapore is good alternative.
If you're not running PPC or email campaigns, you might want to look into those depending on your product, especially if you're expecting some sort of conversion action. Baidu is a great traffic source and email marketing restrictions are non-existent, so you can list-buy and spam to your heart's content.
China is brutal though
edit: You need a local server. If you don't get one in the mainland, Singapore is good alternative.
We paid two ad networks 1000 rmb EACH (163 $$) as prepayment to work on a CPL base. one network gave us Iframe pixel (which is not matched to our brands pixel (image or postback), and the other network claims we didn't pay them which is great.....!
Not sure about Baidu since the product is not recognized by China government (Binary Options and Forex).
For smart affiliates the opportunity is there. you can pay 3RMB per lead and get 10$ from our network (sorry for that, won't do it again...), but still the communication channel is crazy hard even for me (expat from China).
As I said, things are in motion and we are breaking the wall (hypothetically off course..)
Ben
Wow if you have made China profitable you're in for some riches. Yet to see someone make it work as a CPA affiliate.
Sounds pretty interesting, I'm definitely keen to hear more about how this plays out! Glad you got hosting without too much hassle, but good luck getting payment issues and tracking sorted out! FWIW I would never, ever, ever agree to a pre-payment contract in China because your legal options are extremely limited and there's a lot of people who will take advantage of that. If they really want your business they will always agree to invoice you later.
Adsame has English-speaking reps that can run you through the details if you want to check it out. They definitely have financial stuff (think 凤凰网 etc); didn't have fantastic conversion with them but YMMV and the inventory is legit.
If you want to look into paid blogger posts, you'll probably want to go through something like http://www.weiboyi.com/ at least as a scouting tool, even if you don't use the platform for payment (although some reps will insist on it). I think there's similar sites out there but this should be the most popular. Chinese bloggers can be a bit difficult to work with, and don't trust anyone's follower numbers because they're all fake. Look closely at user engagement before putting any money down.
For me the best resource for me diving in was http://www.meihua.info/. Massive list of marketing companies with brief descriptions and contact info. Takes some digging but it's absolutely worth taking the time to look into even if you have a few companies lined up already. Expect to not get anywhere with a good portion of them, though.
I'd be surprised if Baidu was that sensitive to your content and it wasn't just an issue of going through the right channels. Regardless it's really tricky to get an account set up with them, you can't go direct so you're forced into using a reseller. Bit of a hassle and requires more commitment as well as a larger budget, but it's extremely good traffic once you get it optimized.
we actually got stuck with the website host registry , we need some sort of a government certification called ICP which is given to either listed companies in China or Chinese nationalities (I fu#$%g love this..), so the hassle is right here. we'll find the answer soon (always do). not quite decided about the right strategy to use with these bloggers (care to advise what makes them tick?)
looks like a great resource, thanks a lot! once we get the site up and running, we'll start piling up (gotta to believe it
. I'm engaged! (not literally..)
What type of payment methods are popular in China? I,e for digital goods - do they have some kind of Chinese Paypal or people just use credit cards?.. I know there's gotta be information about that somewhere, but if anyone can chime in on that, it would be great!
just check Amazon.cn, they have everything. In short, people in Asian countries are generally cheap as fuck and don't like to incur CC charge fees for the most part, so everyone uses bank cards. You find that problem even in developed countries like Japan, etc. Yes people do use credit cards, but there's a reason why consumerism hasn't spread as fast to these countries and you don't really see many offers for asian countries except flagrantly scammy PIN submits. I think people use QQ virtual currency as well, that would be as close to a chinese paypal as you'd get.
Yes, I think Baidu.com is the Number 1.
Something I will recommend is that get a server in China for your sites, that will make loading of the sites much faster since it does not have to go through the Great Firewall of China. I travel to china often and notice that American sites load a whole lot slower compared to any Chinese site.
Oh, right, I forgot about government registration. Fuck getting listed in China, just get a server in Singapore and be done with it, the performance difference won't be significant.
For the bloggers, they all take gifts or money. Payment methods will be tricky if you don't have someone. Personal rapport is key and don't pay in advance. The main thing is just making sure you're not overpaying for fake followers and that followers are genuinely engaged. Running raffles on social media is popular and can work well (sign up for a chance to win x kind of stuff) but dangerous for quality; a lot of people just sign up for as many raffles as they can.
Payment methods: Alipay is the equivalent of Paypal and owns the majority of the market space. QQ's Tenpay service has some traction as well but all you really need is Alipay and bank transfers. You can't really skip one or the other, but just the two will keep you covered well enough.
Interesting discussion here.
Being Singaporean and effectively bilingual, I'm always on the lookout for opportunities to bridge the China > Everywhere else gap man.
Thing about China is they would much rather be self-contained than give business to the rest of the world even if it inhibits innovation.
A server in HK,SG,Tokyo would be just fine. Getting a server (even a domain name) in China? Good luck with the almighty censorship. If they sniff you are doing something illegal on a server in China, they will take down your server and seize your domain in no time. No refund please.
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