We get questions about this often, so here it is!
This is the full list of ad types you’ll find on China’s most popular search engine, Baidu. And, we’re going to follow up with similar posts for 360 and Sogou soon.
Plain Ol’ Default Text Ads
On Baidu, the default text ads include a title line and 2 description lines.
The title is limited to 50 characters and the description lines are limited to 80 characters.
Next to the URL, you can see three additional things…which users pretty much just ignore. 😉
- Verification level.
- “Comments” added by users.
- “Business Promotion”, which indicates that it is an ad, not an organic search result.
Sitelink Extensions (Basic)
Multiple sitelinks can be added to a text ad.
This gives searchers additional options to click-through to particular areas of your site. They’re useful for promotions too.
Brand Zone
Baidu Brand Zone allows brands to really make a splash, but it’s not like the normal search ads that performance marketers love. Although it’s useful for brand awareness and making some bosses feel good about themselves, it is also quite expensive. Prices tend to start in the range of 100K CNY/month. Pricing is not per-click.
The Brand Zone area can include a variety of images, text and links.
We wouldn’t say Brand Zone is bad, but our clients tend be really focused on driving conversions and measuring return-on-ad-spend, so we use Brand Zone sparingly.
Brand Starting Line
Brand Starting Line is a bit like “Brand Zone” but scaled down. It’s designed to help mid and small-sized companies improve brand awareness on Baidu.
Prices start at around 15,000 CNY, but pricing is done on a case-by-case basis.
Baidu Image Ads / Image Extensions
Images can be added within ad groups, and those will show up in ads sometimes. This doesn’t cost extra.
Useful in any industry. We use images quite a bit! We feel they help with branding while also driving performance.
Images have a higher chance of appearing on ads in the top position.
Multi-Image Ads
This ad type is used to showcase products. It doesn’t necessary need to lead to an e-commerce site where they can buy, but it’s generally used in that way.
Fengchao Ads
Fengchao is a type which includes various elements we mentioned above. Ads can be composed of the regular title & description lines, as well as an image and textlinks.
Fengchao ads are only shown for ads that rank in first place.
Fengchao ads on a mobile device.
“Shantou” Ads
This ad type is a bit different. Various textlinks totally replace the usual description lines.
Shantou ad management is a bit different too. They should be used for collections of long-tail keywords.
Phone Number Extension for Mobile Devices
Baidu can show a “call” button for mobile devices.
These are easy to setup and work well for driving leads.
App Promotion for Mobile Devices
It’s possible to promote mobile apps directly within Baidu mobile search results. These are good for driving downloads, although they require a bit more setup work than the “call” extension ads do.
Automatically Adjusted Ads
Sometimes Baidu will automatically analyze keywords, ads text, and landing pages, then randomly show ads in various formats.
In the images below you can see Baidu showing automatically generated textlinks in three different formats.
