• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 15, 2016

Despite being banned in mainland China, Twitter just named Kathy Chen as managing director for the region. Chen previously served in executive roles at a number of tech titans, including Microsoft and Cisco.

The social giant has maintained an office in Hong Kong since mid-2015.

Like most U.S. tech giants, Twitter would love to expand its Chinese market share. “Twitter is the best way to give live updates of your products & services, and share Chinese content in real-time, with a global audience,” Chen tweeted.

This year, digital ad spending in China will account for 49.7% of all ad spending -- up from 14.8% just five years ago -- according to GroupM.

Some tech companies are having better luck than others in penetrating China’s “Great Firewall,” is it is commonly known. Apple recently succeeded in launching its Apple Pay mobile payment system in China in partnership with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

In China or elsewhere, Twitter is increasingly desperate for additional ad revenues.

Citing a flattening of its user expansion, eMarketer recently lowered its ad-spending projections for the company.

Twitter will generate $2.61 billion in ad revenues in 2016 -- down $340 million from the $2.95 billion that eMarketer projected in its last forecast in the third quarter of 2015.

eMarketer analysts attributed the downward revision to a slowdown in the expansion of consumers using Twitter, explaining: “Despite Twitter's efforts to get more people to use the platform through features like Moments, user growth seems to have come to a near standstill.”

Martin Utreras, eMarketer senior forecasting analyst, estimated that 90% of Twitter’s revenues would be derived from mobile users: "We have yet to see material monetization of logged-out users.”

Going forward, eMarketer projects that Twitter’s user base will climb to 291 million users worldwide this year, but reduced its estimates for the number of U.S. Twitter users ages 12 to 24 and 65 and older in the U.S., based on its new data.