Is it really 2006?

Met with Stephen, a financial analyst from RBC Captical Market. We were talking about a lot of online advertising related stuff. One thing came across our discussion is that technology provider seems to be only one that is trying to push the online advertising technology forward.

With influence from the western world, Chinese online advertising technology companies have been trying to catch up. Soon, they found out that their products arent going anywhere. I blame the media agencies, they are way to 'lazy' to adopt anything new, even there are tons of ideas that could increase efficiency of their campaigns. I am not sure what is the reason for that, but my guess is that these agency people werent educated to learn and adopt new technology, rather use old stuff and try to save pennies.

sad... people here wanna hire 20 college grads to do entry level work more than use a good software.

Rich Media to Mobile

Saw this rich media ad with mobile functions.

http://www.smartcreative.cn/test/sina/sony_test1130.html

You can type in your mobile number and instantly get a text message with coupons on your mobile phone. Quite a neat incorporation beween Rich Media and Mobile technology.

Delivering ads through multiple media channels, i am not sure if it will be a trend, but worth it a try. How convenient would it be for advertisers if they can deliver all of their brand information to all media in one try...

Look it up!

Personally i feel one of the biggest problem in China is how people react to things they don't know. Most of the techie people are acting like guys who's lost on the road but never bother to ask for directions.

When you are asking them something that they don't know, the first reaction is stunned, then followed by awkwardly trying to come up with something that sounds right. Please look it up!

For one instance, 'streaming media', an easy term to describe a media component(generally video) is delivered with streaming technology. no, not in china, people call all floating ad streaming media. I just don't freaking get it. so some guy saw 'streaming media' and they dont know what it means, so he is like, i dont need to look it up, i guess streaming media is just like floating ad. so he started to use it. Other people came along and be like what is streaming media. The guy would braggingly say i know it, its the floating ad. Those people didnt bother it to look it up. so everyone started to call floating ad streaming media.

something like this happens a lot here. people in china pass around wrong definitions, ambigueous concepts and underdeveloped technologies, but they think they are right.

Without knowing what is really right and good, without scientifically look up and prove. China will never be able to get rid of the tatoo that says low cost labor on her back.

Look it up!

Traditional to Internet

Visited a couple of traditional media agencies in Shanghai, pretty big ones. It seems like with more and more demand by big brands, traditional media agencies are really trying to tap into the internet market.

However, sadly, all of their stuff have very poor knowledge of internet advertising, Pageview, impressions, clicks and CTR, basic terms, are like a 14 century russian poem to them. I mean these account managers are like 24, 25 years old who are barely educated for advertising now need to take on something that is even harder to understand.

Talents are greatly needed in China.