China’s digital ads market to hit $50b in 2017

The Chinese digital advertising market is expected to reach US$50 billion by the end of 2017, an eMarketer report said on Monday.

According to the New York-based market research company, China's top three internet giants, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, will dominate 62 percent of the booming market. The number is expected to rise to 70 percent in 2019 when the overall market size expands to US$76 billion, ifeng reported.

Alibaba has China's largest online shopping platforms - Taobao and Tmall - where its revenue comes mainly from online merchants. Tencent's revenue comes via the instant messaging app WeChat, which has over 900 million user. Meanwhile, Baidu dominates the country's online search market.

Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are expected to represent 15 percent of this year's global digital ads market, although almost all of this comes comes from the Chinese market.

While Google and Facebook are expected to account for almost half of the world's digital advertising spending this year.

EMarketer's forecast analyst Cindy Liu stated that China's advertising expenditure was focusing more on the "mobile advertising format as users spend more and more time online".