VivaKi Global CEO Visits Tencent; Expresses Confidence in the Course of China's Digital Marketing

BEIJING, Oct. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- On the morning of October 24, Frank Voris, the global CEO of VivaKi -- part of the Publicis Groupe, a global leader in digital advertising solutions -- visited Tencent along with his senior management team and expressed his willingness to cooperate closely with Tencent in the area of digital marketing. SY Lau, senior executive vice president of Tencent and president of its online media group, along with his senior management team, warmly received the VivaKi team, and took the opportunity to share and exchange points of view on China's evolving digital marketing landscape. Tencent is the only Internet company in China the VivaKi global management team visited on this trip.

In July, Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) and Publicis Groupe SA (Euronext Paris: FR0000130577) announced a definitive agreement for a merger of equals, creating the world's largest advertising communication group. As an indispensable part of Publicis Groupe, VivaKi has a strong influence on global ad spending and media investment.

As China's largest online life platform, Tencent not only plays a key role in facilitating the online life of China's netizens, but also acts as a quality media channel bridging communication between brands and consumers. Thanks to its huge accumulated user base as well as commercial value, Tencent is now regarded as an effective window for understanding China's changing digital media landscape and developmental trends. Due to the size and influence of both VivaKi and Tencent, the meeting between them carries significance for both parties.

"Mobility and other digital trends brought by the technology revolution are reconstructing the DNA of the entire advertising industry, and this journey of transformation has just begun," SY Lau said. He added that rather than a new tool kit and new media mix, digital media should be considered marketing's new state of mind. He called for the traditional marketing state of mind to adapt to embrace the new world. This was echoed by Frank Voris, who believes it is essential for media and ad agencies, adhering to their customers' brand identity, to pinpoint the right target audience in a highly efficient manner while taking into account the user's channel of communication, such as mobile devices.

The latest data from the China Internet Network Information Center (CCNIC) shows that the percentage of China's mobile Internet users hit an all time high of 78.5% of the population in June, surpassing that of PC Internet users. This leaves no doubt that China has entered the mobile era. Tencent is prepared in every way to address the new market opportunity. In the area of mobile, Tencent WeChat, a hugely popular Chinese messaging app with over 400 million users, launched a payment feature to facilitate both online and offline communication between advertisers and consumers, providing more possibilities for O2O marketing. In the areas of big data and content marketing, Tencent launched the Ad Exchange advertising trading platform and a demand-side platform (DSP) called Tango to provide quick, accurate ad placement leveraging the power of big data; and Tencent Video is investing significant time and resources to introduce the best-quality TV dramas as well as producing original programs to provide the ideal channel for advertisers to implement highly sophisticated content marketing.

One excellent example was Olympic Parents, Tencent's 2012 program sponsored by P&G, one of VivaKi's key customers, which focused on the moving stories told by the gold medalists, athletes, their parents, and their experiences during the Games. P&G gained maximized returns thanks to Tencent's marketing solution integrating the mobile integrated information platform plus interactive products plus social dissemination. This campaign has been regarded as one of the industry's most successful case studies, and one that fully demonstrates the influence of Tencent's integrated multiple platforms.

"We see more opportunities than challenges in this evolving digital marketing landscape," SY Lau said, and added that Tencent is willing to explore changes and address new situations to realize the full hidden value of its digital media platform for advertisers and for industry influencers like VivaKi.

About Tencent

Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Every day, hundreds of millions of people communicate, share experiences, consume information, seek entertainment, and shop online through our integrated platforms. Our diversified services include QQ, Weixin and WeChat for communications; Qzone for social networking; QQ Game Platform for online games; QQ.com for information; as well as our eCommerce open platform. Our company was founded in Shenzhen in 1998 and went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004. We seek to evolve with the Internet by investing in innovation, providing a hospitable environment for our partners, and staying close to our users.

For more information, please visit www.tencent.com/ir.

SOURCE Tencent