After their recent skirmish with the Chinese government over Internet porn, Google China is back online. And they’re already optimistic: apparently they’re poised to announce a Q2 revenue increase in China of 25% over the previous quarter. (And in this economy, that’s not just great; that’s phenomenal!)

Brand Republic reports that Google China will also see operating revenue increases of 45% to 50% over the second quarter of last year. For owning only 30% of the Chinese search market, that seems pretty impressive. And the revenue boost from April, May and June of this year probably wasn’t because of a jump in market share—they’ve only added eight percentage points to their marketshare over the last two years.

Meanwhile, Baidu continues to dominate the Chinese search market with 64%, according to Brand Republic. And it’s not losing ground to Google, either—Baidu is up six percentage points from two years ago. So it would seem that smaller players in the market are losing market share to the two leaders. Brand Republic doesn’t mention on a similar revenue boost in Q2 for Baidu, but the Chinese search giant did have a strong first quarter this year.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt notes that the company continues to work with the Chinese government over its pornography concerns.

What do you think? Is Google betting better at monetizing in China, or are people just suddenly more willing to click on search ads? Do you think Baidu is seeing similar gains?

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Google Added 25% to Chinese Ad Revenue

Not even close to needing a boob job herself, FiestaMovement YouTube babe Jill Hanner is pimping the Plastic Surgery channel and her new gig as their new celebrity news babe.

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FiestaMovement Babe Pimps Plastic Surgery Channel

Not even close to needing a boob job herself, FiestaMovement YouTube babe Jill Hanner is pimping the Plastic Surgery channel and her new gig as their new celebrity news babe.

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FiestaMovement Babe Pimps Plastic Surgery Channel

The results of a new poll from Harris Interactive indicate that Internet advertising isn’t as effective as search engine marketers would like to think. When asked what medium’s ads were most helpful in making purchase decisions, the 2500+ American respondents indicated that first television, then newspapers, then search engine ads. Internet banner ads fared even worse:

• 37% said television ads were most helpful in purchase decisions
• 18% said newspaper ads
• 14% said search engine ads
• 3% said radio ads
• 1% said Internet banner ads

Perhaps most revealing, however, is the math. Those numbers don’t add up to 100% because another 28% (rounding effects) said that none of those ad media were helpful in purchase decisions.

The Harris poll also asked about what kinds of ads people ignore. Again, the banner ads didn’t do so well:

• 46% tended to ignore Internet banner ads
• But only 17% of people said they ignored search engine ads
• 13% ignored TV ads
• 9% ignored radio ads
• 9% don’t ignore any of those ad media

The full results (PDF) break out the data by demographic and geography:

I’m kind of torn about these results. I’ve long said that as an Internet marketer, I’m proud to have people so subtly influenced by search engine ads that they don’t recognize that influence later. On the other hand, it’d be nice to be considered “helpful.” On yet another hand, since when is the point of advertising to be found “helpful”? Should that even be our goal?

What do you think? Is this something to get worried about, or should we go along our merry way, advertising or persuading but not “helping” people?

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Search Ads Less Helpful than TV, Newspaper

There was once a day - or at least it feels like there was - when music had deep meaning.

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Advertising Has Removed Music’s Soul