Innovation has long been considered as one crucial factor in promoting advertising evolution. The competitive world of advertising is ever changing because of technology innovation and marketing ideas evolution. It is inevitable that certain advertising media decline over time and others flourish. In China, it is no exceptions.

In traditional world, Focus Media, a Shanghai-based media company, by aiming operating digital LCD (liquid crystal display) TV networks in 200-plus commercial buildings in Shanghai and Beijing, has now enjoyed great success because of their pioneering thinking and is planning their NASDAQ listing.

While in online world, after the failure of numerous advertising-based start-ups during the dot-com days, many people held that online advertising was a low-growth business at best. But reports issued by emarketer.com suggest that the booming online advertising sector fueled tremendous revenue growth for Yahoo and Google in 2004.

It is believed that the Internet has offered great opportunities for advertising industry. According to insiders' reports and news, in 2005, Instant Messenger, gaming, IPTV and many other web-based services are likely to drive more multimedia usage and in turn nurture rich media advertising opportunities.

NarrowAD and AllYes are two China-based major forces in online marketing. And the former was also recently quoted, as a distinct web-based example of targeted marketing, which was listed in the first position among "Top 10 New Business Model" by China-based New Fortune magazine.

with the rapid development of contextual advertising provided by NarrowAD, the context targeted ad model has drawn great attentions from analysts and media circle.

In a recent Dow Jones column, NarrowAD.com was quoted as one of the two "stand-out startups looking to exploit the growing advertising inventories".

Contextual advertising means advertisements on Web sites that is targeted to the specific individual who is visiting the Web site. In the US, there are many competitors in this field. And in China, NarrowAD.com is a blazer. With NarrowAD, ads that match the content are placed in 1000-plus most visited Chinese portals, blogs and other kind of specialized websites, in an automated or semi-automated manner.

"NarrowAD contextual advertising has become the fastest growing interactive marketing tool in China, both our publisher alliance and customer base is becoming increasingly powerful. Said Forrest Zhang, CEO of NarrowAD.com, "And with our mature and robust algorithmic technology, we'll continue to grow and continue our leading position in this area."