The Long Tail Theory Applied In Baidu's Online Advertising

With the continuous development of information technology, The information on the internet has been growing rapidly.Facing these numerous information, people are urgent to find the best way to acquire what they're looking for online.Thanks to the search technology,which helps netizens to solve this annoying problem. Today, search engine has become the primary means accessing to information.Therefore, most companies has used search engine marketing(SEM) to reach the Chinese target audiences. Search engine marketing in the United States has become a promising industry, which is based on a large number of Internet users with strong purchasing power. By the end of 2010, the number of netizens in China has reached 457 million. In comparison to traditional marketing,SEM has its unique characteristics including:targeted reach,pay only for results which has attracted a large number of companies especially small and medium enterprises.Similarily, SEM will also become a robust industry in China.At present, search engine marketing is a new emerged advertisement and its research is still at exploratory stage, The theory is still immature, unable to form a relatively complete system which cannot play a guiding role in practice. The Long Tail theory is a new theory found in the Internet era. This paper made a tentative study on application of the Long Tail Theory carrying on a case study on Baidu's Advertising System. It is compared between Baidu PPC ads and Google AdWords to dig out the advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of this subject to promote the healthy development of Baidu's online advertising business model in the future.