With the recovery of China’s economy and the ever-changing market environment in 2024, advertisers are facing new challenges and opportunities. According to the “2024 China Advertiser Marketing Trends Survey Report” released by CTR Market Research and the Advertiser Research Institute of the Communication University of China, we can see that advertisers are accelerating their own “self-driven evolution” to adapt to the development and changes of the market.

The Advertising Market Shows Strong Adaptability

In the first quarter of 2024, the growth rate of China’s GDP and the total retail sales of consumer goods showed a clear positive correlation with the growth rate of the advertising market. The advertising market has shown a resilient development trend based on changes in the macro environment. According to the report data, the growth rate of the advertising market is consistent with the growth rates of GDP and the total retail sales of consumer goods, indicating that the advertising market has strong adaptability and resilience.

Advertisers Focus on Internal Energy Storage

Against the backdrop of increasing external environmental uncertainty, advertisers pay more attention to optimizing their internal operations. The report points out that advertisers’ scoring of their business conditions (on a scale of 1-10) is above 7.0, showing a high regard for internal factors.Advertisers have achieved resilient development through proactive internal measures, such as senior decision-making behavior, brand development needs, and business management measures.

Innovation Driven by Limited Budget Growth

Despite limited budget growth, advertisersseekto achieve more goals and better results through innovation. In terms of new product promotion, the report mentions that 92% of advertisers have new product development needs, and the marketing expenses for new product promotion in 2024 are expected to increase by 3 percentage points. This indicates that advertisers stimulate brand vitality through new products and take on more innovative responsibilities in the marketing department.

Application of New Technology

Advertisers are very interested in the development of AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Generated Content). The report shows that nearly 80% of advertisers are expected to apply AIGC in 2024, an increase of 9 percentage points from last year. Creative content generation is the main field where advertisers use AIGC, reflecting the active exploration of advertisers in the application of new technologies.

User Expansion and Market Extension

Advertisers precipitate “new retention” of brands through cross-border breakthroughs, and at the same time, they expect to increase investment in regional marketing in prefecture-level cities, county-level cities, rural areas, and international markets. The report points out that the proportion of advertisers of different scales in 2024 that are expected to increase investment in regional markets is compared with the overall level, showing that large enterprises attach great importance to increasing investment in international markets, while small and medium-sized enterprises focus on increasing investment in the sinking market.

Mental Accumulation and Content Empowerment

Advertisers build a content middle platform to unify the main tone and build a multi-element content ecosystem. The report emphasizes that 84% of advertisers agree that “content marketing is the best way to achieve brand differentiation and deepen consumer relationships.” Content marketing has become a way that advertisers value, especially on their own apps, official websites, and other channels.

Confidence Transmission and Industry Progress

Advertisers take the initiative to boost the confidence of related parties in the industry chain, such as increasing investment in media public relations propaganda and maintaining middlemen/agents. Television media, especially CCTV, hasastrong influence value and has become an important channel for advertisers to carry out strategic exposure.

Conclusion

In 2024, the marketing trends of Chinese advertisers show the characteristics of adaptive development and self-driven evolution. With limited budgets, advertisers are striving to achieve continuous growth and enhance brand value in the ever-changing market environment through strategies such as internal optimization, innovation drive, user expansion, market extension, mental accumulation, and confidence transmission. With the continuous emergence and application of new technologies, advertisers are actively exploring more efficient and accurate marketing methods to adapt to and lead the development trend of the market.

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