Sina – Investment Conference Presentation – Part 1 –

Sina Presentation – Part 1 – Advertising
On 3/28/2007, Charles Chao, the CEO of Sina, gave a presentation in the 10th Credit Swisse Asian Investment Conference. His presentation provides a roadmap of where Sina is going.

The following is the main point of his presentation:

Sina is consists of five major business lines:
1. SINA.com (online news and content)
2. SINA Community (community-based services and games) – blog, podcasting, video, instant messaging, casual games.
3. SINA Mobile (mobile value-added services)
4. SINA.net (search and enterprise services)
5. SINA E-Commerce (online shopping)

On the advertising part of Sina:
- Online ad. is expected to grow 35% YoY per year for the next five years.
- Sina generates traffics from its contents (most other companies from sticky applications.) Content offering generates 70 – 75% of traffic.
- Used to be content aggregator for traditional media.
- Starting last year, Sina placed much emphasis on self generated contents and user generated contents.
- Right now, it is focusing on the multimedia content, specially the video contents and the multi-device contents (PC & Mobile Phone).
- Currently has more than 2000 media companies as partners.
- Starting 3 years ago, put great effort in self developed contents. It builds its own editorial staff. In the entertainment area, most contents are self generated. An example is Sina VIP chat where it interviews more than 10,000 celebrities (or is it 10,000 celebrities’ interviews).
- The following channels are specially:
- News: number 1 in China
- Sports: number 1 in China, 3 times bigger than the next competitor
- Finance: 1st in China. It experiences five times traffic growth in 2006.
- Auto: 1st in China for all media company (not just online).
- Entertainment: 1st in China.
- Technology:
- Women channel

Next, he talked about the users generated contents. Starting from late 2005, Sina starts to work on user generated contents.
- Sina Blog: It already has more than 30% of market share. The contents of Blogs also contributes to the portal. For example, some celebrity wrote a scoop on the Sina Blog, Sina news picked up the story and it become big national stories. It really helps both the Blog and the portal.
- Sina podcasting (youtube-like service): Launched 3 months ago and had already become one of the leaders. It integrates with Sina Blog and vertical portal channels. Sina will invest in this in 2007. It hopes for video ads in the long term.
- Sina circle: a Facebook, Myspace like service.
- Sina Post-it: Online classified ads.

After that, Charles talks about Sina’s Multimedia effort:
- podcasting
- Sina Video: Becoming like TV stations. One major accomplishment is in the popular sports match. Sina cornered the European football area.
- Sina Music Box: All legal music. It has 400,000 songs on the platform already. It shares advertising money. It allows for free listening on the PCs. It charges for the mobile download. Eventually, Sina hopes to be the default music platform in China.

In part 2, I will have what Charles Chao said about Mobile and Q&A session. Part 3 has my comments on his presentation.