With a logo of a lively lion, Publicis Groupe SA, the world's third largest advertising group by revenue, is about to take a larger bite of China's digital market like an ambitious lion.

Olivier Fleurot, CEO of Publicis' public relations and events unit, said in an interview with China Daily that the group would focus on China, especially its digital market, and intensify investment here.

"We are not yet big enough in China, so we are looking on a constant basis at potential acquisitions and we have discussions with people here in China. Our intention is clearly to do two things: invest more here in China and invest in digital."

Publicis has set digital and BRIC countries as its priorities. It expects 25 percent of its revenue to come from digital activities and another 25 percent from BRIC countries, including Brazil, Russia, India and China by 2010.

According to Fleurot, the group is going to achieve its goal in the digital area after acquiring Razorfish, a leading digital marketing agency, in August. In the first half of this year, digital activities accounted for 20.8% of the group's total revenue. As for investment in BRIC countries, China and India are among the priorities. While the group's business declined in many countries over the first half, China registered a stable performance.

"Obviously, the Chinese market is the focus of a lot of attention at the moment and everybody is looking at what is happening here because we think, for the first time ever, that China could lead the recovery," said Fleurot.

Among others, the Internet can be an example of China's potential in digital activities. According to research by Data Center of China Internet, advertisements totaling 23.1 billion yuan were used on the Internet in 2008, accounting for 10.5 percent of the country's total advertisement input. Internet advertising is expected to increase to 31.4 billion yuan in 2009 and 46 billion yuan in 2010, respectively, taking up 12.5 percent and 16.3 percent of the total input. China has been one of the fastest growing countries in the digital field.

"The potential for growth is much based on India and China," Fleurot added.

"Digital and mobile communications are the key drivers for our business," said Glenn Osaki, regional chief of Manning Selvage & Lee, a global communications firm under Publicis. "Much of our best work is in the areas of social media, digital, and mobile communications, especially in a market like China where mobile communications are such a critical way for people to interact with one another."

In new fields like 3G communications, Fleurot said the ability to learn could help a company to win.

"We are all learning and there is no model, so we just have to be ahead of our competitors in the learning curve," he said.

"We have to be a bit smarter, a bit faster. That's what we have to do."