Oct 17, 2012: Of the 330 companies surveyed since our last check in July, the proportion with Brand Link is still at ~33%. This is in line with our earlier view that the low hanging fruit’s been picked and Baidu will need to tier or regionalize Brand Link to increase adoption.
Brand Link still has the highest ROI: click-through rates are 2-3x better than the average text ad. Pricing is mixed, however. Earlier in the year, Baidu was trying to push through price increases of ~30%. More recently, we’ve heard errant data points about Baidu trying to upsell features rather than push through price increases – even Baidu must show some restraint in this ad environment.