Online advertising is coming into a life of its own in China with smarting advertisers focusing their attention on the country's 9,000 Internet-based firms. According to a survey conducted by
Forrester Research, China's online advertising market was valued at $8 million in 1999 and it said that the market will be worth about $440 million by 2004. The growth of online advertising is far
outpacing that of the conventional ad industry. On-line advertising is expected to win a greater share of the market in coming years, Business Weekly of China Daily reports. DoubleClick recently
opened its first Chinese office in Beijing and has no business at present. But DoubleClick is the online ad agent for at least 140 Asian website portals and is also the online ad operator for IBM,
Ericsson and Dell. According to a survey on local Chinese online advertising agents, 7.68% of Internet users frequently click to and read online ads; 25.18% sometimes. The survey conducted by the
China Internet Network Information Center also shows that 49.04% of Internet users click to the ads only when they are interested in the contents of the ads; 14.09% never do it while only 4.01% hate
the ads because they fear they will be encouraged to spend money.