Internet Marketing Optimist

With the Asian economies quickly emerging from the economic downturn and the Western world still languishing in the worst recession in recent memory, growing Internet markets in countries like China look ever more attractive. Although accurate numbers are notoriously difficult to come by (much of the data is heavily politicized), Chinese broadband population already surpasses that of the US and its overall number of Internet users is higher than the entire US population (via SEW). With over 338 million of its citizens on the web (out of over 1.3 billion), China constitutes the single biggest Internet market in the world.

However, don’t expect Google, Yahoo! or Facebook to help you reach this growing market. As the data below shows, their reach in China is very limited, in part due to successful domestic competition, in part due cultural differences (take a look at this fascinating behavioral study conducted by Enquiro Research a few years ago), but also due to the direct intervention from Chinese authorities (traffic to sites like Facebook and Twitter is often restricted).