Social grows closer to a quarter of online display adspend in China

An overview of growth trends in social advertising expenditure in the China between 2012-2018.

Social advertising expenditure in China was measured at RMB27.3bn (US$4.0bn) in 2017, according to data from WARC and iResearch. This represents a year-on-year increase of 42.1% from 2016, when total spend amounted to RMB19.2bn. Growth has decelerated since the previous year (+63.3%), but remains rapid. Indeed, investment in ads on social platforms has grown 8.5 times since 2012, and the latest projections included in WARC's International Ad Forecast show that investment will reach RMB36.2bn this year.

Social accounted for over a fifth (21.5%) of total Chinese online display adspend last year, up from a 20.7% share in 2016...

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