Ad Revenues at China's Weibo Jumped 42% in 2016
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China’s Weibo microblogging service has been making a comeback, as witnessed by its 2016 annual results. The platform’s efforts on video content and live streaming helped boost 2016 ad and marketing revenue by 42%.
Weibo is China’s answer to Twitter — except that it’s on the up-and-up, while Twitter’s ad revenues fell in the most recent quarter. Weibo is worth more than Twitter by market capitalization, and its user numbers are now almost on par with Twitter’s. The Chinese platform said it had 313 million monthly active users in December, up 33% from a year earlier. Of those, 90% were on mobile. Twitter had 319 million monthly active users globally at the end of 2016. (Like most Western social media, Twitter is blocked by China’s Great Firewall, so most of the mainland can’t access it.)
One key to Weibo’s success is that it has worked with TV networks and Youku, the Alibaba-owned video streaming platform, to get more video content on its platform. The NFL recently began streaming its games live on Weibo, including the Super Bowl. CEO Gaofei Wang said on an earnings call that daily video views on Weibo had increased about sevenfold in December from the previous year.
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