Eastward MediaEastward Media
The Chinese consumers in North America represent a significant and lucrative market in both United States and Canada. With the population of 5.4 million in the United States (source: U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) in 2019) and 1.7 million in Canada (source: 2021 Canada Census), this demographic also wields considerable purchasing power, representing a valuable market opportunity for brands.
Chinese in North America often maintain strong cultural ties to their heritage. Brands that acknowledge and respect these cultural nuances can build trust and loyalty within the community. So, when brands want to target Chinese consumers in North America, they often mean to target the culture and not only the ethnicity. Many marketers or agencies are often struggling to find the key to successful campaign planning.
Chinese consumers are known for being early adopters of technology and digital trends. Brands can leverage this tech-savvy nature to engage with the Chinese community through digital marketing, programmatic advertising, e-commerce, and social media strategies.
What makes Chinese consumers hard to reach in North America? Their distinct media usage habits.
New Chinese consumers in Canada and the United States are more resistant to the forces of acculturation. Compared to other cultural groups, Chinese immigrants require more time to conform to mainstream Canadian or American consumer culture. This makes them harder for North American brands to reach and engage though digital media.
The slower acculturation rates for new Chinese consumers in Canada and the United States is largely driven by their strong preference over Chinese-language content on familiar platforms. It is also very likely to be rooted from their heavy use of walled gardens. Chinese newcomers still heavily retain using their favorite Chinese websites, apps, publishers, and platforms to access online content. When they arrive in North America, their media diets still mainly include platforms like YouKu, iQIYI, Sina and Tencent or Chinese social media like WeChat, Weibo, and Little Red Book. These are the Chinese equivalents to mainstream platforms like YouTube, Netflix, and Facebook. These China based content sources are walled gardens under the Great Firewall policy and are disconnected from the open exchange.
North American data companies cannot buy ad inventories on these closed ecosystems through the open auction. This means that agency planners cannot rely on their trading desks to effectively target Chinese consumers in Canada through the sites they use most. This unique digital media habits present a significant challenge for marketers to target the Chinese consumers.
Referencing ComScore Key Measures and our independent surveys, we estimate that the new Chinese consumers in Canada spend average of more than 85% of their total online time using familiar Chinese sites. And because digital media is the primary vehicle for new ideas and ideals, Chinese consumers in walled gardens are under-exposed to the same messaging received by their Canadian and American peers.
The Chinese digital media landscape is also heavily fragmented. Chinese publishers have their own audience data products, creative acceptance requirements, measurement partners and payment terms. Working with a multicultural agency partner who does not only understand the cultural market but also the requirements and limitations of the Chinese publishers is very important.
Leverage programmatic advertising and do it right when targeting Chinese audience!
Programmatic advertising is an automated, data-driven method of buying and optimizing digital advertising space in real-time. Instead of the traditional ad-buying process that involves human negotiations and manual insertion orders, programmatic advertising relies on technology and algorithms to streamline the process.
Programmatic ad campaigns offer several advantages, including efficiency, better targeting capabilities, and the ability to optimize campaigns in real-time. It has become a dominant force in the digital advertising landscape, transforming how ads are bought and sold across the internet.
Targeting the right audience through the correct ad inventory is the key to success in programmatic advertising.
How does Eastward Media help agencies and brands access inventory on Chinese websites and apps?
At Eastward Media, we help agencies and brands target Chinese consumers in the United States and Canada through their favorite Chinese websites and platforms. Programmatic advertising campaign is one of our core solutions with proven successful results for many global or North America brands.
We’re able to target Chinese consumers through our unique DSP that accesses premium inventories from Chinese publishers. We’ve combined China’s largest display, native and video inventories from top-tier publishers to target different segments of Chinese audiences in North America. This inventory is not available through the open exchange. We are filling the important missing piece for you.
Let’s look at some programmatic campaigns that we did for different brands :
Through our DSP with exclusive license from the Chinese Censor and direct partnerships with Chinese publishers, we can access over 98% of all available Chinese publisher inventory in North America. We leverage data management platforms (DMPs) from Baidu (China’s Google), Alibaba (China’s Amazon), Tencent (China’s Facebook) and Ctrip (China’s Expedia) … etc. to target digital audiences across the United States and Canada.
Through our managed programmatic service, Eastward Media can target segmented online audiences by the following attributes:
Contact us today if you want to know more about our different solutions to effectively reach the Chinese audience in North America.