This also translates into an active digital advertising market, which is now the second largest after the U.S.
According to iResearch, online advertising in China reached 209 billion Chinese yuan ($30.4 billion) in 2016 — a jump of 36 percent from a year ago. The firm forecasts the growth to remain stable in the next few years.
Even though products from Western giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter are banned in China, the country’s internet scene is vibrant, spawning the likes of Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and Sina, which are all listed outside the mainland.
China’s live-streaming scene, in particular, has generated a lot of attention recently.
“Social media has become an important battlefield for brands to compete for brand awareness, engage audience and convert them into customers,” said Ashley Galina Dudarenok, head of strategy at Chinese social media consultancy ChoZan.
According to state news agency Xinhua, citing a senior government official, there are more than 730 million active social media users in China. Many of those users were born in the 1980s and 1990s and now live in the big cities.
