Baidu (BIDU, Financial) recently launched an innovative effort called Baidu Connect. Baidu Connect comprises of light apps and is an advanced tool for merchants, allowing them to generate significant leads from apps and search, having built-in functionality to allow high conversion and provide merchants with a strong CRM system.
Slowly getting better
Baidu Connect is still in initial stages of release. In the previous few months, Baidu has worked closely with more than 40 value-added service providers and has gathered more than 400,000 customer accounts with verticals ranging from professional services to hospitality, including both current and new customers.
A wide range of opportunities provided by the mobile devices allows Baidu not only to connect with approximately 0.5 million major SMEs and customers being served by search, but even a broad base of tens of millions of local service enabled businesses who have started embracing the internet. Therefore, Baidu is focused on developing its O2O offering and remains optimistic about the tremendous market opportunity.
For the search domain, Baidu introduced instant search on PC which is an innovative feature that create enhanced user experience and demonstrates healthy growth in clicked page views.
Baidu is believed to be a leading mobile search service provider with mobile traffic accounting to more than half of its search traffic during the quarter. It is continuously building on the organic part of its mobile search comprising of more than half of its mobile traffic, accelerated by considerable user adoption of its Baidu mobile and mobile Baidu browser apps.
What's driving growth
Leaving apart the channel distribution, search is primarily driven by big data and technology. Voice queries on the mobile platform comprises of over 10% of mobile data on Baidu currently, and in the coming five years, more than 50% of searches are believed to be image or speech driven. Baidu has made significant investments in these leading technologies and is positioned much better than the competition.
Baidu is a well-known leader in visual recognition technology globally. The visual search techniques leveraged by Baidu is believed to be the most advanced in the world with a wide range of functionality.
The other significant offerings of Baidu include Mobile Baidu 6.0 with an outstanding feature in the Discover button. This allows users with promotional offers and personalized recommendations, depending on the interest of users, their location and time of the day. Version 6.0 is also compatible with Baidu Connect.
Baidu Mobile Map is a leading market player, with more than 240 million monthly active users, an increase from more than 200 million during the second quarter and expanding approximately 70% on year-over-year basis.
Hotel bookings using Baidu Map demonstrated solid growth, almost tripling year after year.
During the third quarter, Baidu executed a highly successful promotional campaign with McDonald's China for highlighting the attractiveness of its product portfolio. McDonald's China closely executed with Nuomi and Map, and utilized Baidu products like 91 Wireless, Hao 123, Mobile Baidu and several others.
Considering map distribution, Baidu concreted its already strong position. In the third quarter, Baidu offered an average of 160 million apps daily, an increase from 130 million apps in the previous quarter and more than double since the combination of 91 Wireless app and Baidu distribution platforms approximately a year earlier.
Major monetization processes including CPM, click-through rates and paid clicks grew significantly and continuously. Baidu upgraded its bidding system and launched more ad formats, such as richer extension and dynamic ad, to enable customers with greater choices and enhanced ability to develop their campaigns as per their explicit needs.
Conclusion
Baidu continue to witness enhanced traction with city-level bidding that allows customers to refine their bid for more than 360 cities. It has continuously focused on implementing superior quality standards for mobile landing pages.
