Alibaba First, Xiaomi Eighth in Ranking of Chinese Online Advertising Revenue

Beijing-based Zhongguancun Interactive Marketing Lab, together with institutions including PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), on Thursday jointly released the 2021 China Internet Advertising Data Report.

According to the report, in 2021, China’s internet industry benefited from the growth of domestic market demand, and the whole industry achieved advertising revenue of 543.5 billion yuan ($85.6 billion), a year-on-year increase of 9.32% compared with 2020. The growth rate was 4.53% lower than that of the previous year. The total scale of the internet marketing sector is about 617.3 billion yuan, an annual increase of 12.36%, while the entire advertising market is 1,160.8 billion yuan, an increase of 11.01% over the previous year.

Furthermore, the concentration of China’s internet advertising market in 2021 increased compared with that of last year, with the top 10 companies such as Alibaba accounting for 94.85% of the market share. The market share of the top four companies, meanwhile, further increased to 78.2%.

Among the firms, Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent ranked as the top three in terms of advertising revenue, while the revenue of the former two companies exceeded 100 billion yuan, respectively. Baidu‘s advertising revenue resumed growth in 2021 after experiencing a decline the previous year, maintaining the fourth position. The companies placing fifth through 10th were JD.com, Meituan, Kuaishou, Xiaomi, Weibo and Pinduoduo, in turn.

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In 2021, from the perspective of the proportion of platforms’ revenue, e-commerce platforms continued to occupy the top spot in advertising channels, accounting for one-third of the total market revenue. The advertising revenue of video platforms continued to increase by 30.28%, and the market share increased to 21.66%. For the third consecutive year, search platforms have seen declining advertising revenue and market shares, with advertising revenue accounting for 10.43%. The market share of social platforms’ revenue has been stable at 9.77% in recent years.