Many of China’s leading internet companies—including the Alibaba-affiliated Ant Group, Baidu, JD.com, and Suning—have already announced goals and implemented programs to cut emissions. Brands may soon be in the hot seat themselves.

In mid-May, the China Cyberspace Administration—the state’s internet watchdog—called out tech giants Baidu, ByteDance, Kuaishou, and Microsoft for improperly collecting user data there. Behind the government’s push for greater data privacy and security is not just its desire to be seen as a responsible global partner that adheres to international norms.

Chinese tech giant Baidu has been working on autonomous vehicles for years and recently launched the world’s first paid (though limited) autonomous taxi service in May. Not to be outdone, Alibaba announced earlier this year that it would develop a self-driving truck in partnership with logistics company Cainiao.

eMarketer senior analyst Jasmine Enberg joins principal analyst Nicole Perrin to discuss whether major US tech firms are taking a page from the BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) playbook. Are Americans entering the age of the domestic super app? What would that mean for brands?

Tencent surpasses Baidu as the No. 2 ad player in China

eMarketer vice president of forecasting Monica Peart breaks down our digital ad spending estimates in China and the influence of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.

The announcement—targeting 34 of China’s largest internet companies, like Baidu and Tencent—emphasized regulators’ purported commitment to snuff out abuses of information and market dominance, among other anti-monopoly violations, per Yahoo News.

The traditional “BAT” goliaths—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—accounted for 52.3% of the digital ad market in China last year, and JD.com took another 5.7%. Beyond those four, the only other major player we have estimates for is Meituan, which made up only a 3.0% share.

Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and other internet giants have released senior-friendly versions of their most popular apps, with features such as larger text and icons, simplified navigation, screen readers, and dialect recognition technology powered by AI.

Although this pattern prevails in many markets, in China conventional wisdom also holds that the poor reputation of its dominant search engine, Baidu, further hinders the growth of search ad spending. In fact, ecommerce giant Alibaba has been far more successful at generating new search ad revenues than Baidu.

Notable investors: Baidu, BMW i Ventures, FM Capital. Headquarters: Tucson, Arizona. Why it’s worth watching: Lunewave has gotten the attention of major autonomous driving investors, such as BMW, and is looking to commercialize with supplier partnerships and manufacturers. Metawave.

This report explores our latest forecast for time spent with media in China, and how the coronavirus pandemic will impact our forecast for 2020 and beyond.

In China, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent—the trio of tech giants known as the BAT companies—dominate digital life, including social media, instant messaging, search, ecommerce, mapping, gaming and video streaming.

Programmatic ad spending growth in China is driven by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (also known as “BAT”), and they will continue to make up a significant share of the programmatic display market.

In 2019, 94.5% of internet users in China will be social network users. That amounts to just 59.0% of the country’s population. This report covers the trends shaping the market, as well as our first-ever user forecast for the popular short-video platform Douyin and updated estimates for WeChat and Sina Weibo.

Already, Google-owned Waymo and Baidu are reportedly working on developing level 4 AVs, while Tesla claims it’s nearing the completion of a level 5 vehicle. And while this is a big leap, Honda Legend AVs won’t be clogging city streets anytime soon. Honda limited the current version to a small batch of 100 vehicles with a steep price tag hovering around $102,000.