Hasta La Creative!

The Chinese social media landscape moves fast and if you haven’t been paying attention closely, there’s a lot you’ve missed. New platforms have popped up, while main players including Alibaba and Tencent have consolidated their power. In general, China’s social landscape is involved in innovations in video, engagement and payment that have evolved differently and faster than anything in the West. For the last 8 years, Kantar Media CIC has taken the pulse of China’s social landscape. Here are five changes and developments that we think brands, agencies and tech players should understand for 2016.

The BATS, the core of China’s digital and social landscape, have grown ever more powerful

Chinese internet powerhouses Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Sina (referred to by the acronym “BATS”) together have upwards of eight different social media and/or e-commerce platforms, each with hundreds of millions of active users. They are the absolute core of China’s social and digital landscape because of their cumulative 2 billion users. These key players are at the heart of making the Chinese internet viral, informative and practical. Let’s call that “VIP.” The “I” and the “P” are particularly important in differentiating China from the rest of the world. Trusted Information in China can be scarce, while the plentiful information on social media such as news, word of mouth and rumors is often the type of content that cannot be found anywhere else, even with government regulators keeping a close watch. This makes social media more important in China than most global markets.

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