With rising cross-border trade between Hong Kong and Guangdong, Yahoo's local subsidiary is casting a wider net to sign up online advertisers from among the neighbouring province's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
That net is expected to eventually stretch as far as the United States and could put Yahoo Hong Kong in competition with Alibaba.com, in which US parent Yahoo has a minor stake. It also has a large stake in the Hangzhou-based e-commerce firm's parent Alibaba Group.
Yahoo Hong Kong, which operates the city's leading Chineselanguage portal with 3.42 million unique visitors each month, has so far secured more than 60 new Shenzhen-based online advertisers that are keen to reach local consumers.
'It makes a lot of sense for us to expand the advertising market for Yahoo Hong Kong,' managing director Alfred Tsoi Po-tak said, noting the increasing number of local consumers heading to the mainland in search of low-cost goods and services.
Recent government statistics shows that about 160,000 people travel to and from Shenzhen on a daily basis.
'A lot of Hong Kong people visit Shenzhen to buy clothes, have wedding gowns made, use photographic studios, for translation services, car rentals, legal services and even dental care,' Tsoi said. 'At the start of this year, two of our Hong Kong online search resellers started conducting a series of seminars for SMEs in Shenzhen to educate them about how to effectively reach their target consumers. Our message was simple: they can reach more consumers in Hong Kong through search-engine marketing with the city's most popular online portal.'
The SMEs buy from Yahoo Hong Kong so-called 'keywords' related to their products or services, so every time a search is made with those keywords, their online advertisement appears. When searchers click on the advertisement, they automatically go to the advertiser's website.