Total revenue in 2012 of Sina Weibo was 66 million USD. Its 77% was from advertisement revenue.

Recently Sina published the performance reporting in the fourth quarter, and they also published some report that is related with Sina Weibo.

Sina announced that the total revenue of Sina Weibo in 2012 was 66 million USD, and its 77% was from advertisement revenue. And according to them, mobile advertisement was rapidly growing, its revenue share already exceeded 30% of total advertisement revenue.

Sina Weibo started to publish advertisement space to the public from last second quarter, and they also started to provide "Advertising Center" to the corporate users. So they will also continue to accelerate their advertisement solution as ever.


The other 23% of revenue was from services on their platform, such as games or "Weibo Club" and so forth. According to them, the revenue of these service was also rapidly growing. So I would like to keep attention that these services how contribute to their revenue-up as ever.



They also published that the number of registration users were more than 500 million people, and its active users per was 46.2 million people per a day. Of course this number increased compared to the previous year, but the speed of increasing became more and more slow.

So the overseas deployment for increasing their user number and keeping the number of active user will become the key factor for them in future.


Source => TechWeb, China News net

Sina Weibo strengthen marketing support service for corporate users. Can these services become also the foothold of their monetization?

As I explained before, Sina Weibo already started some activity of monetization on their platform. And they recently started some marketing support service for corporate users, so I would like to introduce typical 3 services.

1. Advertising Center

This service is a one of promotional tweet, and is similar to the service that Twitter or Facebook already provided. This service is a one of promotional tweet, and is similar to the service that Twitter or Facebook already provided. 

I asked its cost to the customer center of Sina Weibo, but they said that its cost will be decided after Chinese new year. But the calculation method of its cost is already decided, and there are two calculation method as follows.

CPM : The number that was read of relevant tweet

CPE : The number that was forwarded of relevant tweet, or the number that was clicked link in relevant tweet, etc.

2. Wei-task(Micro task)

This is like a matching service between corporate users and general users who would like to earn money on Weibo.

Corporate user give the task(such as forwarding the relevant tweet or post the relevant contents) to the general users, and its cost will be decided on the basis of the followers number that the relevant general users have or other factor.

3. SMS marketing

This service have three type of sending the message to general users.

1. Register the phone number that already knows.

2. At first post the recruitment messages (such as "Please become a target user of sending SMS announce. If you will become it, then you have a chance to get the luxurious prize", etc. ) on the Weibo.

3. Using the list of advertisement agencies.

In case of this sample, the cost of one message is 0.6RMB(= 0.1 USD) per a person.

As I explained before, SMS is the most popular communication method of mobile devices in China. And this is also the effective method to reach the user who rarely login to Weibo.

Of course, Sina Weibo would like to accelerate their monetization, but I think that these service are also good for the company who would like to strengthen marketing activity to Chinese market on Weibo. 

Source => Sina Weibo

The number of Chinese mobile map users exceeded 370 million people in the fourth quarter of 2012. Google decreased sharply their market share compared to the second quarter.

According to the recent report by Eguan, the number of Chinese mobile map users were 374.45 million people in the fourth quarter of 2012.

This number increased 177.8% compared to the previous year, and increased 22.0% compared to the previous period.

Next is the market share of mobile map as of the fourth quarter.

#1 Amap   29.6%

#2 Baidu Map   20.3%

#3 Mapbar  10.2%

#4 Sogou   9.8%

#5 Google Map  9.6%

#6 Navidoc  9.4%

#7 Nokia Map  5.7%

#8 SOSO Map   3.4%

Other   2.0%

The top market share is Amap(AutoNavi).  AutoNavi is now providing their map to the part of iOS 6 map, and it raised furthermore 5.5% of their market share. Baidu also increased their market share compared to the second quarter, their market share exceeded 20%.

And other remarkable point is the Sogou. In the second quarter, they were out of this ranking. But they had 9.8% of market share in the fourth quarter, and they positioned the fourth place. It can be said great leap forward.

But on the other hand, Google decreased sharply their market share. They had 17.5% of market share in the second quarter, but they decreased their market share to 9.6% in the fourth quarter.

Now mobile internet user in China exceeded 420 million people, and its growth is still ongoing. The mobile map user also will be increasing more and more, so I really be interested in the trend of this market in future too.

Source => Eguan-1, Eguan-2