Ad expenditure gets two-digit growth

BEIJING — China's expenditure on advertisements increased by 14.5 percent year-on-year to reach 681 billion yuan ($108 billion) in 2011, with Internet and radio becoming more popular, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Conducted by Charm Communications Inc, a Nasdaq-listed Chinese advertising agency, the report said that the nation's ad spending growth was much higher than its gross domestic product increase at 9.2 percent last year. However the figure of 14.5 percent was lower than the Charm's estimation of 15 percent made at the beginning of last year, which was due to advertising budget cuts in transportation, building materials, pharmaceuticals and house appliances.

Meanwhile, more businesses put their advertisements on the Internet and via radio. Ad expenditure on websites was up 35.6 percent year-on-year to hit 20.02 billion yuan in 2011. Transportation, Internet services, real estate, information technology and food and beverage industries ranked the top five advertisement investors.

Advertising expenditure via radio amounted to 20.93 billion yuan, an increase of 30.2 percent from a year earlier.

Charm predicted that year-on-year advertising expenditure growth in China is expected to be 13 percent in 2012, a little bit lower than that in 2011. The annual growth of ad spending via the Internet will be more than 30 percent this year.