Buying Baidu Huobao Text Ads
The Chinese text ads on the right hand side of Baidu search engine are officially called Baidu Huobao, which are available for purchase via Baidu’s dedicated ad agencies.
Baidu Hubao is not exactly like PPC ads. You pay a fixed yearly fee, rather than cost-per-click, which is what Baidu JingJia currently is.
There are 10 ad positions available for a keyword, on a first come first serve basis. The first advertiser who sends payment to Baidu gets the first position. The first 3 ad positions are fixed ads. Ad positions 4 to 10 rotate on a daily basis. Everyday ads on positions 4 to 9 move down one position and ad on position 10 move up to position 4.
Each Huobao ad is shown on the right hand side of Baidu and its selected partner sites for the duration of one year. Advertisers will have to pay in full (for the cost of a year) before their ads will be shown. If you have missed the purchase for the year, you will have to queue for the next period, and you are only allowed to start queuing not more than 3 months before the start of the next period.
You will be allowed 13 Chinese characters in the headline and 32 characters in the description. If you include your keywords in the ad description or headline, your keywords will be shown red.
Unlike conventional PPC, one problem with Baidu Huobao is that you have little control over the ranking of your ads by optimization. The only changes you can make are your ads and your landing pages. Also, this format of text ads does not suit mid- and small-size businesses as the upfront cost you need to pay could be expensive. You can even check how much you are supposed to pay for your keywords by using this keyword price checker:
By the way, Huobao means “explosive” in Chinese. For those you can read Chinese, here is a brief description about Baidu Huobao.
Related Information:
- Baidu Ranked Third in Asia Pacific Search Market
- Baidu Showing PPC ad at Position 10
- Chinese Search Engines Ranked Top 10
- China Paid Search Marketing Strategies
- Baidu PPC Algorithm Changes
Posted on December 5, 2007
Filed Under Baidu, China Internet, PPC |
Comments
6 Responses to “Buying Baidu Huobao Text Ads”
Leave your comments
- Your first comment will be reviewed before getting posted.
- Your subsequent comments will be posted without review.
- All spammy comments will be deleted.
Nice article, thanks for sharing.
Pat
Shanghai
That’s a very nice overview on how Huabao works, nice post.
Next post on Jingjia?
Timely post for us. We’re just starting to think about expanding our advertising to China, but it’s interesting how difficult Baidu makes it for North American companies (the site isn’t translated into English).
Does Baidu allow North American companies to buy direct? If not, are there reputable Chinese brokers for this type of service?
Thanks for the introduction to Huabao. I almost choked when I saw the yearly keyword prices. It seems rather archaic charging it yearly when the web moves so fast.
Well, many PPC management companies in China charge a yearly cost per keyword on Adwords, while SEO companies quote a few thousands RMBs for a single keyword (without any keyword research btw…); it is clear that China still has a long way to go when it comes to best practices in the SEO/SEM industry…
————-
Thanks for the introduction to Huabao. I almost choked when I saw the yearly keyword prices. It seems rather archaic charging it yearly when the web moves so fast.
[...] the search engine with the 3rd highest search volume in the world in December 2007, also offers Baidu Huobao as another text ad alternative. Huobao ads are displayed at the right hand column of Baidu’s [...]