What is Baidu PPC and How Baidu PPC Auction Works
Baidu PPC has been a proven Chinese search marketing platform for both large companies and SMEs. This post is an introductory article for beginners who would like to learn more about Baidu PPC before moving forward.
This article will help you understand What Baidu PPC is and how Baidu PPC works, explaining Baidu PPC auction, the bidding process, and important factors like Baidu Trust Score, Quality Score, and cost-per-click.
If you are already familiar with Google Adwords, Baidu pay-per-click advertising should be a doddle.
Let's begin.
What is Baidu PPC (Baidu SEM)
Baidu PPC (aka 百度推广, also known as Baidu Phoenix Nest, Baidu Ads, Baidu Adwords, Baidu SEM, and Baidu Tuiguang) is Baidu's pay-per-click advertising system in which advertisers bid on a list of keywords to display their clickable ads in Baidu's search results.
Advertisers need to pay for the clicks, which is how Baidu makes money from search.
Is Baidu PPC Effective?
Many people want to know if Baidu PPC will be effective for their businesses.
In most cases, Baidu PPC has been proven to be effective for many industries, as long as you choose the correct keywords and create good ads.
In other words, yes, it is effective if done right.
How Much Does Baidu PPC Cost?
It usually costs 5000 RMB to open a Baidu PPC account, which is the initial account deposit. You can see it in your account balance and use it for your campaigns later.
The cost of your ads would be up to many factors, such as the daily budgets you set for your campaigns, how competitive your industry is, the bidding prices of the targeting keywords, how well you write your ads, and how good your landing page is.
Ryan Chooai
How Does Baidu Display Your Ads
Baidu displays your ads above the organic search results, as below
Besides that, Baidu occasionally displays ads below the organic search results:
How Does Baidu PPC Bidding Work?
The actual position of your ads is determined by many factors, including the Baidu Trust Score of your business entity, Quality Score, the bidding prices, and the user behavioral data of the searchers.
Baidu Trust Score
Baidu Trust Score is a point system Baidu uses to calculate how trustworthy a business is in the eyes of Baidu.
Every advertiser begins with 100 points. A certain number of points will be taken from your total score if any violation of Baidu advertising policies happens, such as when you use Baidu PPC to promote something illegal in China, or your Baidu business profile page receives many complaints.
Quality Score
The Quality Score is calculated based on the quality of your ads and landing page, which is determined by predicted click-through-rates, user experience, and content relevancy.
The Bidding Prices
The bidding price is how much you are willing to spend on each click people do for your ads.
Baidu PPC bidding heavily penalizes advertisers who bid with low-quality scores. Conversely, those with high-quality scores get higher ad ranks and lower costs per clicks.
What is CPC of Baidu PPC?
CPC, or cost per click, is the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks on their Baidu pay-per-click ad.
On the other hand, the actual cost per click is the amount an advertiser pays each time a searcher clicks their advertisement on Baidu. The actual cost per click is always lower than the maximum bidding price.
For most industries, a click on your Baidu ads usually costs from 30 Chinese cents to 10 Chinese yuan.
That is about 5 cents to 1.5 dollars, based on the real-time exchange rates between Chinese yuan and U.S. dollars.
Of course, you would face higher bidding prices if you come from an extremely competitive industry for Baidu advertising, such as medical & health care.
What is the Structure of a Baidu PPC Account?
A typical Baidu PPC account follows a “campaign - ad group - keyword” structure.
Campaign
A campaign is a set of ad groups (ads and keywords) that share a daily, weekly or monthly budget, location targeting, user interest targeting, negative keyword lists, and other settings.
Campaigns are often used to organize categories of products or services that you offer.
Ad Group
An ad group contains one or more ads that target a shared set of keywords with bidding prices.
Keyword
A keyword is a word or short phrase that describes your product or service, which you put under an ad group and use to match searchers' queries on Baidu.
How Do I Track the Performance of My Baidu PPC Ads?
Baidu Analytics (aka 百度统计, also known as Baidu Tongji) is the most efficient tool to track your campaign performance.
You can also use third-party web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, but additional configurations would be necessary, such as UTM tracking codes.
I hope this article clears some of your doubts about Baidu PPC. We maintain and update this post regularly. If you have any question that is not explained in this post, please leave it in the comment, and we will add it to the post too to help more people.
Moreover, if you are looking for professional help with Baidu PPC advertising management, we are always ready to help.