More internet trends at Beijing AdTech

You are likely to hear a bit more about the latest internet trends in China as AdTech Beijing will open its doors soon and major bloggers will be reporting regularly. Thomas Crampton gives here an overview.
They include some of our speakers at the Chinabiz Speakers bureau, like Lonnie Hodge from Guangzhou, Kaiser Kuo and Paul Denlinger. To my amazement the interest in speakers covering this very existing subject has been rather low, compared to other industries and trends. For all the wrong reasons, I think. The outside world is not yet really realizing how the revolution in China nowadays it taking place.
Thomas gives you all the links you need and discusses the items on the program, like this very important one:

All statistics are lies, especially in developing countries. In China, however,
even online statistics are difficult to pin down.

While the US and Europe use relatively unbiased third party companies to verify data, I am told that Chinese Internet portals often offer no such guarantees. In addition, many companies do not buy based on impressions, they buy according to the number of hours a banner is online. You might, for example, buy a banner ad for three days, but not know how many times it has been seen. Why? One explanation is that the big bosses do not understand click-through, so they need to see an ad sitting for 24 hours on a website.
Companies at AdTech:
Nielsen//Netratings, DoubleClick, iResearch, Yankee Group.

Looks all pretty exciting.

Megatrends in the Chinese internet

Thomas Crampton interviews in fast speed two prominent experts on China's internet about the latest trends. Kaiser Kuo from Ogilvy talks about the fast development of p2p in China, where in the US Napster-like services increasingly are being controlled. Andrew Lih, working on a book on Wikipedia, shows how the Chinese gaming scene is following the capitalistic way, also fast speed.
Kaiser Kuo belongs to our Chinabiz Speakers bureau; Andrew Lih not yet, but that is a matter (very short) time.

Meeting speakers - Bill Fischer

One of the great things of having Shanghai as my current seat is that in the maelstrom of social activities many meetings with visiting speakers and other clients are on walking distance. Today we had planned a meeting with professor Bill Fischer from the Laussane-based business school IMD, who is in town for a lecture at a two-day internal meeting of the leftovers of IBM (after Lenovo took their PC-business over).
We had planned to meet at Sasha's, but there was a wodka-party going on, so we moved on to the beautiful garden of the Cotton's Club.
Bill is not only a talented speaker, but also a great networker and he would get us in touch with many people in his network.

Hurun identifies 106 billionaires in China

Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf, in China better known as Hurun, identified in his annual report on China's richest 106 billionaires, up from 15 last year, writes Bloomberg.
According to Hoogewerf, who is also a Chinabiz Speaker, he has found only a part of China richest:

"China may have 200 billionaires, we just haven't identified them yet -- there are a lot of people out there who don't report their assets,'' said Rupert Hoogewerf, who has produced the list since 1999. ``The new wealth we haven't discovered yet is lying in the stock markets.''

His report was released yesterday, one day after Forbes came with a similar report. Both reports identify Yang Huiyan, the 26-year old daughter of a real estate developer, as China's richest person, with assets worth US$ 17.5 billion.

Brand building in China - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff

Chinabiz speaker Tom Doctoroff of JWT explains to Business Week how brand building among Chinese companies is changing.

The most exciting development is the emergence of midsize brands. You have these behemoth companies that are totally byzantine. But the midsize companies are led by visionaries who want to lead their companies to the top of the mountain. Most of the large companies use the big shops for propaganda purposes.

How much influence has China over Burma?

William Overholt

Very little, says William Overholt, director of the Rand 's center for Asian Pacific policy and Chinabiz Speaker in the Los Angeles Times.

"They actually have very limited leverage, as all foreigners do," said William Overholt, who advised the pro-democracy coalition of 21 tribal groups that created the Provisional Revolutionary Government in Burma in 1989 and is now director of Rand's Center for Asia Pacific Policy. "The whole theory of this government is to cut itself off from the world so no one can influence it."

More in the LA Times. For those who have been following the conflict in North-Korea, the argument must not come as a surprise. Initially, China was also assumed to be in a position to change North-Korea's policies, politely or with economic sanctions. But its leverage proved to be much less than the US, as North-Korea was mainly eager to get the United States as a player in the talks. Also here it took a while before the China-experts could really made themselves heard in the political drumbeating.

Quality over price - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

Chinabiz Speaker Shaun Rein takes on the perception that Chinese consumers go for price and the price only, here in Forbes. When international companies play their cards right, the Chinese consumers are willing to pay a premium for quality, especially when they are competing domestic Chines companies.

The trend for Chinese consumers is to buy items that are more expensive and of better quality. In other words, their frugality of recent years has been more a function of low disposable incomes than a cultural preference for shoddy yet cheap goods. How else can one explain BMW's smashing success in China, where the Middle Kingdom has become its fastest-growing market and second-biggest buyer of the flagship 7 Series?

That is of course true for those segments of the market who can afford to buy a BMW. But that segment is growing and, Rein argues:

Companies that understand the fear Chinese consumers have about being sold shoddy goods, and position themselves properly to assuage these fears, will be the beneficiaries of increased domestic consumption in the coming decade.

From mailing list to Facebook

Now, we are looking forward to a well-deserved holiday, the remaining three weeks of October are going to be nothing short of hectic. Well in the second month of our operation, new projects, speaking opportunities and more casual visitors keep on asking our attention.
One of the more interesting new developments is the way we have started to talk to our network. We have set up a mailing list for potential clients and thought the number of people on that list would be a kind of benchmark for our success. I'm now actually very close to declaring the mailing list dead, since our activities on Facebook has been much more dynamic.
We have build there a community that has passed today 88 members and it has been for example the basis of our worldwide affiliate program. There is of course a danger of neglecting the people who are not yet on Facebook. We will find a solution for that.