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China鈥檚 digital ad sector grows 12.1% in 2024: Economic slowdown shifts ad dominance to platforms like Tencent and Pinduoduo.

Seed-Thinking is competing with US-based AI products and also within China鈥檚 cutthroat AI sector that includes DeepSeek, Alibaba, Manus AI, Tencent, and Baidu. Competing on multiple fronts gives ByteDance the advantage in developing in-demand features.

Meta鈥檚 latest salvo comes as a direct response to the rise in competition, specifically from China鈥檚 DeepSeek, followed by a flurry of models from Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. Meta鈥檚 fantastic four: Llama 4 is its first model built on mixture of experts (MoE) architecture, which boosts efficiency by distributing AI tasks to specialized sub-models.

The domestic services in the group included BesTV, Bilibili, Douyu, Huya, Mango TV, PPTV, Sohu, Tencent, Tmall Box Office, and Youku. There wasn鈥檛 much variation in viewership rates among different demographic groups. TV usage across gender, age group, income, and household location was fairly consistent, pointing to the format鈥檚 pervasiveness in China.

That said, China鈥檚 triumvirate of leading sub OTT platforms (Tencent Video, Youku, and iQiyi) already have far more viewers in China than US-only providers like Hulu and Peacock have garnered. Click here to view our full forecast for digital video viewers in China or subscription OTT video viewers in China. Behind the Numbers.

Tech giants ByteDance, Baidu, and Tencent have all launched AI chatbots to capitalize on this trend.

According to Business of Apps data from 2023, YouTube Music accounted for under 14% of global music streaming market share, behind Spotify (32.1%), Apple Music (15.0%), and Tencent Music (14.1%). An ad-supported layer is only just coming to the US market. Premium Lite will serve ads next to music content for a discounted subscription.

A series of major milestones are on tap for total media and digital media ad spending around the world in 2025, although growth will be uneven across countries and regions.

Digital鈥檚 share of total media ad spending in Asia-Pacific will reach a milestone in 2025, surpassing $200 billion for the first time. The region鈥檚 digital ad spending will increase 8.6%, led by India, while China鈥檚 growth will slip noticeably amid the country鈥檚 economic struggles before a rebound the following year.

From the rise of sophisticated AI-driven tools to new policies reshaping data privacy and competition, 2025 promises to be a year of relentless change. Companies that adapt will thrive, while others risk being left behind in a swiftly moving market.

As China鈥檚 retail media advertising market begins to mature, off-site channels鈥攊ncluding WeChat and Douyin, TikTok's sister app in China鈥攚ill increasingly drive growth.

Mastercard expanded its relationship with Alipay this year to include remittances, while Visa partnered with Tencent in 2023 to enable remittances in WeChat Pay wallets. MoneyGram and Western Union have forged similar partnerships.

Digital, traditional, and total media ad spending growth will all accelerate in 2024, although only modestly. The outlook has stabilized for most countries and regions, even if spectacular growth is harder than ever to find.

Earlier this year, MoneyGram partnered with Tencent to capitalize on China鈥檚 large remittance market. And in May, marking a major milestone that was years in the making, a Mastercard joint venture began processing domestic transactions in China using a Mastercard-branded card issued by a local bank.