ChinaCircle Combines Product Placement Advertising with Web 2.0 Homepages, Seamlessly Integrating Coca-Cola's Happy New Year Message with Chinese Blogs, Podcast, & Photo Albums

Business Wire, Feb 21, 2006

SHENZHEN, China -- During this holiday season, the Coca-Cola cap hanging icon is spinning across thousands of ChinaCircle web 2.0 pages displaying "Happy New Year" on one side and "Coca-Cola" on the other. Coca-Cola and other Western firms are part of the new product placement advertising opportunities offered by ChinaCircle (CC) to place product advertising in the 'virtual home' of Chinese.

ChinaCircle (CC) is enabling Chinese to organize all their blogs, podcast, photos, ask/answer, clubs, and classifieds in their own 'personal media' homepages. These 'virtual homes' for new media are critical to Chinese that seek greater freedom of expression, as China's traditional media channels are limited and controlled by the government. CC is enabling advertisers to bid on 'personal media' homepage product placement opportunities by key word, product category, geographic location, gender, and age. For example, Starbucks logo appears inside the hot beverage hanging icons subscribed to by women in northern China, Heineken beer image appears in the action/sport category related background graphics used by men in southern China, and Nokia frames are being selected by mobile phone lovers throughout China.

According to Co-Founder Joseph Tong, "After providing home pages where Chinese speak out freely through blogs, podcasts, albums, group discussions, asks/answer and other web self-generating content tools, users demanded ChinaCircle offer personalization features as well. Our advertisers continue to look for something more effective than pushing banners on a passive audience. It was natural to integrate the background, frame and other homepage decoration items demanded by users with the need of advertisers to move toward seamless integration between ad and user-generated content. Now when a user selects her cosmetics related background sponsored by Espoir, she not only downloads that advertisement, but also becomes an Espoir advertiser for every friend she invites to her blogs, photos, podcast, group discussions, etc."

About ChinaCircle:

CC operates the largest product placement advertising network in China. CC's network consists of millions of 'personal media' homepages where Chinese speak out and better connect. These personal media homepages are created by consumers with higher-than-average disposable incomes (ninety percent are University graduates, many are successful business executives and entrepreneurs). Product placements in CC 'virtual homes' match the personal media content of each homepage to seamlessly integrate consumer generated, and advertiser sponsored content. Placing your product in the virtual homes of Chinese has never been easier.

CC's founders' track record on the net begins in 1996 with the founding of MeetChina. MeetChina, China's first business to business e-commerce portal, gained financial support from Citibank, Motorola, Mitsubishi, Softbank, Stanley Works, First Data, Capital Research, Bessemer, former President George W. Bush and many others, and covered extensively by media such as: CNN, CNBC, WSJ, China Daily, CCTV and Time (including a front page article in the Asia edition of Time).

To see product placement advertising seamlessly integrated with web 2.0, visit: http://www.chinacircle.com/help/advertise.html