Regional Analysis on Chinese Internet Ads with Click-Through Rates

Abstract

Abstract Internet Ads is one of the important forms of E-business activities, due to its high targeting, rich contents, flexible media as well as high interactivity. Since the econ-omy and Internet development of differ-ent regions in China are quite differen-tiated, the Internet Ads of different re-gions have significant regional characte-ristics. Based on the real log data from a Chinese Internet Ads intermediate, this paper empirically analyzes the differenc-es and characteristics of Internet Ads of China’s regions with the Click-Through Rates. Moreover, this paper proposes some suggestions for decision supporting Chinese Internet Ads players, i.e., web-sites, intermediates and advertisers, from a managerial perspective. Keywords : E-business, Internet Ads, Click-Through Rate, Regional Analysis 1. Introduction Internet Ads is one of the important forms of e-business activities, due to its high targeting, rich contents, flexible media as well as high interactivity, which is keep-ing pace with four major traditional me-dia ads, such as Television Ads, Radio Ads, Newspaper Ads and Magazine Ads [1]. According to industry reports, in 2009, even with financial crisis, Chinese Internet Ads market is still booming, reaching 20.73 billion RMBs, continuing rapid growth of 21.9% [2]. Since 2003, Internet Ads market has continued high-speed growth of 50% roughly, occupying the total advertising market share from 3.8% in 2006 to over 10% in 2009 [2]. Nowadays, Internet Ads is going to show its unique advantages and expand the market share significantly. Although Internet Ads market is ex-panding rapidly, the effect of Internet Ads is not satisfactory, since Internet users become to more and more immune from Internet Ads. Furthermore, users fre-quently complain the inconvenience brought by Internet Ads. One evidence is that the Click-Through Rates (CTRs) of Internet Ads decline significantly, e.g., from 30% ~ 50% on Banner Ads in mid-dle 1990s to less than 0.1% currently [3]. CTR is actually one of the key meas-ures to evaluate the performance of Inter-net Ads, which is impacted by many fac-tors, e.g., visibility of Ads, attitudes of users, interactive environment, etc [4,5,6]. Besides, region is also one of the impor-tant factors which show some interesting relationship with CTRs, e.g., the Internet behaviors of people in different regions will show different patterns on brows-ing/clicking Ads, leading to different CTRs. This paper is to empirically ana-lyze the difference, characteristics of In-ternet Ads of China’s different regions with CTRs data from some real log data of a Chinese Internet Ads intermediate. The paper is organized as follows. Sec-tion 1 will investigate the relationship be-tween regions and CTRs. The data de-scription and methodology used in this