How to Use Baidu Advertising (Baidu PPC) in China

Baidu advertising is the paid offer of Baidu, China’s largest search engine, sold through its Baidu Marketing platform (e.baidu.com). Search ads appear in prominent positions of Baidu’s results, and advertisers pay only when someone clicks, with a minimum budget of 50 RMB a day. Feed ads and brand ads extend the reach beyond search results.

Key takeaways

• Baidu sells its advertising through Baidu Marketing (百度营销): search ads, feed ads in Baidu’s apps, brand ads, and ads on Baidu’s partner sites.
• Search ads are pay per click: Baidu charges the clicks its system judges valid, and search campaigns start at 50 RMB a day.
• Google is blocked in mainland China, so paid search in China means Baidu first.
• Foreign companies face two hurdles: a platform in Chinese and the account itself. Baidu invites overseas advertisers without a Chinese phone number to call its hotline, 400-800-8888.
• Write your ads in Chinese, monitor them with Baidu Tongji, and never rely on PPC alone: combine it with SEO.

Doing business in China is one of the most appealing opportunities for companies around the world. As the Chinese economy keeps growing and opening up, business owners are increasingly aware of the market’s potential, and savvy managers cannot overlook Chinese demand for foreign products.

An agile way to establish your presence in the Chinese market and make your brand known to a larger audience is paid online advertising. This method may already be familiar to you. However, the way you approach online paid advertising in China may bring new challenges for your business.

For one, Google is not even in the picture for online advertising in China. You must learn how to use Baidu advertising if you want to reach the Chinese market.

Baidu vs Google Paid Advertising in China

Baidu in China is what Google is for the rest of the world. Even if the name does not sound familiar to you, Baidu is one of the largest companies on the internet: it sent 59.26% of search referrals in China in August 2026, against 1.41% for Google, according to StatCounter. If you want Chinese customers to see your products or your company, you must play by Baidu’s rules.

To be entirely fair, even if you target the Chinese market, you should not completely forget about Google, since a large part of the world prefers it. Google can still drive some traffic to your online business. However, Google is blocked in mainland China and people can only reach it with a VPN, so use it as a secondary resource only. To give you an idea, the effort you put into ranking on Google in China should compare with what you would invest in Bing in the Western world: a secondary source of revenue for your marketing campaigns.

What Baidu Advertising Offers in 2026

Baidu’s advertising platform, Baidu Marketing, offers search ads, feed ads, brand ads and several other formats. These are the main resources at your disposal:

Search Ads (搜索推广)

This is Baidu’s counterpart of Google’s search ads, and by far the main resource for Baidu paid advertising. Your ads appear in prominent positions of Baidu’s search results for the keywords you target, and you pay only when a user clicks. Baidu’s system checks each click, and only the clicks it judges valid are charged.

According to Baidu’s page on search ads, the minimum budget is 50 RMB a day, and you can set a daily spending limit to start small and adjust later. Campaigns can target industries, regions and keywords, and Baidu provides an account advisor.

Feed Ads (信息流推广)

Feed ads are native ads inserted into the news feeds of Baidu’s apps. They reach users while they browse content, rather than when they search.

Baidu Qingteng and Brand Ads

Baidu Qingteng (百青藤) places ads across Baidu’s own properties and the partner websites and apps of the Baidu Union network. Baidu also sells brand ads and splash screen ads, and Aicaigou (爱采购) promotes products on Baidu’s B2B search.

The Products of 2018

When this guide was first written, in 2018, Baidu’s pay-per-click service was called Baidu Tuiguang, and the guide also described Pay for Placement (P4P), Baidu Pro Theme and BaiduTV. These names no longer appear among the products of Baidu Marketing, which now groups Baidu’s advertising offers.

How to Open a Baidu Advertising Account as a Foreign Company

As you can see, Baidu’s tools differ somewhat from Google’s, but the differences may not look that intimidating. In reality, a few points can become roadblocks for newcomers to Baidu advertising.

The first problem you may meet is opening the account itself. Where Google lets you open a personal or business account at any time, this is not the case with Baidu.

The account. A Baidu account must be registered with a mainland China mobile number, as Baidu Tongji’s account FAQ states. Foreign companies that want to advertise on Baidu and have no Chinese number are invited to call Baidu’s hotline, 400-800-8888, to learn the account opening process for overseas advertisers.

The documents and the agents. Baidu asks advertisers for compliance documents (资质): its search ads page mentions them, for example, for the refund of an unused balance. Baidu also works with authorized agents, whom you can look up on Baidu Marketing. When this guide was first written, in 2018, a foreign company had to send a copy of its business license, pay a deposit for its campaigns, and wait about a week for an agent to open the account. Check the current conditions with Baidu or with its agents before you plan your budget.

The language. Every step takes place in Chinese, since the platform is not available in English. Unless you master the language, you will need somebody to assist you, and QPSoftware can help you open a Baidu account and start your paid advertising campaign in China.

How to Create a Successful Baidu PPC Campaign

Baidu has its own rules, and you must know them to set up a productive advertising campaign in China. Here are the critical elements to consider.

Title and Text Length

Write your ads within the length limits of the platform, and put your most important message first. When this guide was first written, in 2018, Baidu allowed 50 characters for the title and 80 for each of up to two lines of text, and it could display only one line depending on the position of the ad. Check the current limits in the platform before you write your ads.

Keyword Research

As you would on Google, do your homework to find the keywords that are the most relevant to your business and your audience, and use them in your PPC campaign. Baidu Marketing offers a keyword tool to help you. Plan your account structure too: according to the Baidu Marketing FAQ, an account can hold up to 400 campaigns, with 1,000 ad groups per campaign, and 5,000 keywords and 50 ads per ad group.

Speak to Your Audience in Chinese

Never assume that your target audience will be satisfied with English. You must speak to the heart of your audience, and you can only do that if your ads are in Chinese. If you translate your ads from English, make sure they resonate with your Chinese audience: sometimes the copy needs to be rewritten or adapted to get better results.

Always Monitor Your Campaign

Baidu offers analytics tools to monitor how your website is doing and how your audience interacts with it. Baidu Tongji shows the data of your search and feed ads next to the rest of your traffic. Implement these tools and learn to use them: without monitoring, you will be playing a guessing game, which most likely means wasted time and money.

Never Rely Solely on PPC

Even though PPC campaigns can be highly successful, you also need to work on the SEO of your website. If you combine a well-planned PPC campaign with an effective SEO strategy for Baidu, you will get the maximum exposure in the Chinese market. The keywords that convert in your ads are also good candidates for SEO, and our China SEO team can build the pages that rank for them.

What Should You Do Next?

As you can see, advertising online in China poses some challenges for foreign companies. But if you get past these roadblocks, you will have a chance to expand your business into one of the most lucrative markets on the planet.

Start with the account: check the conditions for overseas advertisers with Baidu, prepare your documents, and write your first ads in Chinese for a small daily budget. Then measure the results with Baidu Tongji, and build the organic side with China SEO services for Baidu and Google.

QPSoftware is a digital agency in Shanghai with extensive knowledge of this market. Our team of international professionals can assist you with your Baidu account, the planning of your advertising campaign in China, and an SEO strategy for your website or e-commerce site.

If you are ready to expand your business into China, or if you want to discover more about it, contact us today, and we will assist you with your project.

Frequently Asked Questions