Tixa Launching Narrowad Contextual Ad Model in China

Tixa Internet Technology Co.,Ltd., a leading developer of online contextual advertising in China, announced the formal launch of the NarrowAD™ contextual advertising solution at China Internet Conference 2004 & Asia-Pacific Digital Technology Expo, which was held in Beijing from September 1st to September 3rd, 2004.

Not like the search-engine-based online-ad model, Narrow Ad offers a contextually targeted online advertising form, which enables different ads to be placed along side the most relevant stories and pictures based on zones and keywords as advertisers define.

Tixa’s NarrowAD™ contextual ad has been embedded into the webpages of Sina.com (# 1 web portal in China), China.com, Xinhua online, Chinanews and many other popular Chinese general and vertical portals.

To give an example, when you were browsing a webpage about basketball at Sina.com, included on that page would be ads for basketball related products and services.

“Online ads are still a vast source of revenue for the Internet industry, but most online ads in Chinese websites are often ignored by or even rile netizens because of their poor relevancy to the web content.“ Forrest Zhang, CEO of Tixa believed online contextual ad would dominate China’s fast growing online market in the future.

Zhang is one of the most prominent, successful entrepreneurs in the Internet industry in China. Prior to starting Tixa, he was the Chairman and CEO of HiChina Web Solutions Inc (known as www.net.cn and www.com.cn). Under his leadership and through two successful rounds of financing from IDG Venture and Newbridge Capital, HiChina has grown into the largest virtual web-hosting and domain name registration service in China. His new adventure Tixa also got funding from Mitsui Sumitomo Financial Group.

Tixa also pointed out they provided an affordable online ad modal for small and medium-sized companies.

“The pay-per-click pricing system is still very new to advertisers in China.” Said Zhang, “we charge only RMB Yuan 0.2 per click (about US$ 0.025), this would be more affordable for many Chinese small and medium-sized businesses.”

As a form of contextual targeted ad, the name “NarrowAD” comes from the Chinese pronunciation of “Zhai Gao” (literally means “narrowly tell”), which is opposite to “Guang Gao” (literally means “widely tell”)- the Chinese name for “Advertisement”. The company uses this specific brand name to highlight the targeting feature of its online ad service.

The concept of “NarrowAD” has drawn great attention from the business circles of China.