Back from Shanghai Ad-Tech 2006

I went to Shanghai Ad-tech 2006 expo in Pudong Shangli-La Hotel this morning. Compared to the number of talks, the number of exhibitors is kind of small, only 20. I talked to 65% of them. There are several foreign companies, coming from Japan, USA and even Slovakia, to look for Chinese partners . There must be much more in the audiences.

85% exhibitors are Internet companies, a few are mobile marketers.

They are in three categories:
1. Search engine: Accoona, a business directory and information search engine providing advanced search to modify result by region, scale of company, and person’s name.
2. Marketing/ad technologies: Lyris (ListManager) and Radica (Email Marketing Management, EMM), iCast (Rich media technologies)
3. Advertising network: Creative, campaign management, data management, analytics, and affiliate

Interesting conversations:

Grigo: I heard that your company is No. 1 in China, but while I was visiting your Web site, I couldn’t find much.
Answer: Well, we are a big but low profiled company. (To be honest), we don’t want people (competitors?) to copy us through our site. You can find out more with this brochure.

Grigo: (with a Hong Kong company) How do you like doing business in mainland China?
Answer: Well, we beat Espolon and got a big client in China, but we want to deal with international/global clients rather than Chinese.
Grigo: puzzled… Isn’t it that China has a huge market and plenty of opportunities?
Answer: (continued)… We found that whenever you deal with Chinese, you need to think about the worst cases of how they would cheat you....

Grigo: I read a piece of news that you got a very important Chinese client recently; do you have an office here?
Answer: Not yet, but we are looking for a partner/partners here today. Actually, it was the client first found us in California.