Domestic marketing outlays expected to rise slightly this year

About one-third of advertisers in China intend to increase marketing expenditures while 30 percent will cut spending this year, a recent study by CTR Research shows.

New brands that were founded within the past 10 years have been more robust in ad spending, Zhao Lili, assistant general manager of CTR Media Intelligence, told the CTR Insight Summit Forum on Thursday.

Advertisers are giving 7.3 out of 10 scores for the industry outlook and 7.5 for the business development situation, according to CTR's survey of more than 300 respondents.

In the first seven months of this year, China's ad spending dropped 11.3 percent from a year ago, but new entrants, especially emerging brands in the personal care, beverage and nutritional food segments, were ambitious in ad spending.

As many as 94 percent of new brands that allocated advertising budgets in this period are local ones.

Those that have been around for more than 10 years are also setting aside about 28 percent of their advertising budgets to promote new product launches and expand revenue streams.

"It's an essential target for advertisers to save costs in the near future," Zhao said.

Dairy products, packaged foods, home furniture and decorative items were resilient despite pandemic restrictions as they boosted marketing expenditures.

Outdoor ads still proved to be an effective channel to enhance brand impressions as ad spending in community neighborhoods and high-speed railway stations picked up from a year earlier.

"With increasingly complex media formats, brands should stick to high-quality content suitable for different channels and viewers to maximize business performance," Zhao said.

The proportion of advertisers leveraging content marketing increased to 85 percent from 80 percent a year ago.

Brands primarily rely on target consumers' shopping preferences and their competitors to make business decisions while turning to popular livestreaming and social media sites to cater to viewers' preferences.

The ratio of digital media out of total media budgets rose to 66 percent from 63.6 percent a year ago.

Companies have taken a sensible attitude toward metaverse marketing gimmicks, with 48 percent saying it's only a concept and better to wait for the buzz to cool down and 32 percent opting to prepare early to better leverage the trend.