Alimama offers free services

Alibaba Group's online ads subsidiary Alimama said yesterday it will make most of its services available free of charge, as it tries to challenge market leaders like Baidu and Google.

Alimama said it will scrap an 8 percent commission on sales from cost-per-time ads on its websites starting from next month and will open its advertising tracking system to users for free.

But it will continue to charge for pay-per-click ads, which account for 20 percent of the company's ad sales.