Chen Tong, senior vice-president of NASDAQ-listed Sina Corp, says his firm
earned much more. He declined to reveal the figure, but adds that the country's
top cellular operator, China Mobile, alone paid 10 million yuan (US$1.25
million) for a title sponsorship of the World Cup section.
Similarly, Chinese home appliance giant Haier had a similar sponsorship on
Sohu's World Cup section by paying 2.5 million yuan (US$312,000).
In stark contrast, GoalChina, the most widely read newspaper by Chinese
soccer fans, reportedly secured only 20 million yuan (US$2.5 million) in ad
sales linked to the World Cup.
The World Cup is not the only battlefield where traditional print media is
losing ground to Internet media.
According to The Blue Book of China's Media, newspaper ads sales fell by 5.1
per cent in 2004, and by 16.5 per cent in magazines compared with an average
growth of 20 per cent in the previous 20 years.
The drop is largely due to increasing competition in an overcrowded market,
according to Cui Baoguo, a professor at Tsinghua University and the author of
the blue book.
But "in a large part, that's also because new media is eroding both the
circulation and ad sales of traditional publications."
Cui estimates that the ad sales of China's major newspapers in the first half
of 2005 dropped by an average of more than 15 per cent year-on-year.
Hong Kong-listed Beijing Media, the advertising unit of popular Beijing Youth
Daily, saw its net profit in 2005 drop by 94.8 per cent to 10.09 million yuan
(US$1.28 million).
Beijing Media attributed the decline to shrinking sales of ads placed by
real-estate developers.
However, "apparently, young Chinese are starting to move away from
traditional print media as they can now access various new media outlets," says
Cui, "And ad agencies have been quick to keep up with the trend."
Tian Kewu, managing Editor-in-Chief of Beijing Youth Daily, says the
newspaper has been hurt by the rapid rise of Internet media like Sina Corp in
the past few years.
In the early days of the Internet boom, traditional newspapers such as
Beijing Youth Daily were providing news free to online firms, or charged very
little.
The reason was simple: Traditional newspapers wanted their publications to
reach more readers.
But the backlash was unexpected.
"We found Sina had become a very strong brand in news, which largely eclipsed
our newspaper," says Tian. "Internet users don't care about the brands of
traditional publications. What they know is that the news is provided by Sina."
As a result, Beijing Youth Daily decided to increase the charge for its news.
Sina offered to pay 1 million yuan (US$125,000) per year, but Beijing Youth
Daily deemed it unacceptable.
"That is even lower than the cost of our daily printing," says Tian.
Accordingly, "we resolvedly decided to cease co-operation with Sina."
Chen, however, denies Sina offered 1 million yuan per year for news from
Beijing Youth Daily.
"That is an exorbitant price that we will never offer.
The online version of news published by traditional media is just a kind of
value-added service. It can never equal the value of the original content," Chen
says.
