In-App Search Marketing in China: Decoding the 2025 Ocean Engine and Ipsos Value Manual
For global Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and cross-border business executives looking to scale, entering the China market requires shifting away from Western-style search strategies. Where international consumers rely on a linear path starting from Google search to an e-commerce purchase on Amazon, Chinese consumers search directly within highly integrated Super Apps. Today, in-app search has become the primary connective tissue for discovery, interest generation, and instant transactional conversion.
To help international decision-makers navigate this unique landscape, we have decoded the core insights from the 2025 Search Brand Advertising Marketing Value Manual, co-released by Ocean Engine (the digital advertising branch of ByteDance) and global market research firm Ipsos. This whitepaper establishes a quantitative benchmark for search behavior on short-video platforms like Douyin (TikTok’s sister app in China). Below, we outline how global brand managers can optimize their China digital marketing and China inbound marketing efforts to capture high-intent buyers.
1.0 The Scale of China's In-App Search Boom
According to the Ocean Engine and Ipsos manual, search is no longer a passive utility in China; it is an active, intent-driven shopping trigger. On Douyin, search has become a primary behavior:
- Massive User Base Engagement: Over 80% of monthly active users actively perform searches within the platform.
- High-Frequency Queries: On average, each search-active user initiates more than 100 searches per month.
- Rapid Growth Rate: Monthly average search page views (PV) grew by over 75% year-on-year.
- Ad Budget Shifts: Because of this immense traffic and higher conversion efficiency, nearly 80% of surveyed brand marketers plan to maintain or expand their search marketing budgets, with 49% planning direct budget increases.
2.0 High-Converting Intents and the Seeding-to-Harvesting Loop
A successful campaign in China’s digital space relies on two localized phases: “Zhongcao” (seeding interest) through engaging content, and “Shouge” (harvesting conversions) at checkout. Historically, these steps occurred on separate applications, resulting in high user drop-off. Search now bridges this gap, with 68% of surveyed brand advertisers agreeing that search advertising connects seeding to harvesting to shorten the purchase loop. These searches carry high commercial value, leading directly to closed-loop transactions inside the Super App:
- E-Commerce Intent: 60% of consumers who perform e-commerce-intent searches make a direct purchase.
- Local Life & Services Intent: 63% of local life searches lead to immediate coupon purchases or local store bookings.
- Lead Generation Intent: Intent-driven searches yield a 36% conversion rate for reservation consulting and direct inquiries.
- App Downloads Intent: Search queries result in a 29% installation and download rate.
3.0 The Search Brand Zone (Pinzhuan) as Your Digital Flagship Storefront
The most critical digital asset in China search marketing is the Search Brand Zone (Pinzhuan). When a user searches for your brand name or designated keywords, the top spot of the search engine results page is completely dedicated to a premium, rich-media ad banner that acts as an official digital storefront. Deploying a Search Brand Zone provides significant advantages over standard organic listings:
- Sales and Conversion Boost: It increases overall e-commerce conversion rates by 28% and total Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) by 26%.
- Brand Sentiment Elevation: It raises user favorability (brand preference) by 12% and official account follower retention by 21%.
- First-Place Interception: It secures the absolute top position, preventing competitors from hijacking your brand traffic. It reduces competitor hijacking rates by up to 1 times for livestreams, 2.8 times for brand accounts, and 33 times for digital stores.
Strategic Upgrades to Know the manual highlights that the Brand Zone has evolved from a basic static banner into an intelligent marketing hub:
- Matrix Operations: Brands can now link multiple sub-brand stores or category-specific stores to a single keyword bid. Compared to single-store setups, this fine-grained matrix management increases campaign ROI by 18% and click-through rates (CTR) by 31% (Page 27 of the Manual).
- Personalized Presentation: The platform utilizes historical user behavior data to display custom Brand Zone creatives, dynamically prioritizing the products and visuals that match the specific user’s intent.
4.0 Industry-Specific Success Cases
Real-world campaigns from the report demonstrate how search integrates with native content to drive conversions:
- E-Commerce & Cosmetics – Chando: To stand out in China’s competitive beauty market, Chando partnered with top-tier content creators to launch a branded micro-drama. They embedded highlighted search links in the comment sections, driving interested viewers to search. This seamless push resulted in a 194% year-on-year increase in GMV during the promotional cycle, a 30%+ click-through rate (CTR) on their Brand Zone, and a peak ROI exceeding 6.0).
- Local Life & F&B – Lavazza: Coffee giant Lavazza combined influencer marketing with a localized, location-based Brand Zone. By partnering with over 1,400 content creators to launch co-branded products, they redirected active search interest to their localized map widgets. This strategy yielded an extraordinary 2% CTR and boosted direct purchase conversions by 39.5%.
- Automotive – Voyah: Automotive brands require a steady stream of high-quality leads. Voyah integrated lead-capture forms and dynamic live-stream referrals directly on the first screen of its automotive Brand Zone, resulting in a 200% increase in test-drive lead submissions and raising livestream referral rates by 38%.
5.0 Scaling Your China Search Strategy with OctoPlus Media
Capturing active search intent across these complex, proprietary Super Apps requires an experienced, localized partner with deep technical expertise. Headquartered in Hong Kong, OctoPlus Media is a comprehensive digital marketing agency specializing in helping global brands succeed in the Chinese market.
Through our proprietary China Data Bank™ platform, we deliver precise programmatic target marketing and audience insights to maximize your campaign ROI. We provide end-to-end services across China’s major social channels—including customized WeChat Mini Program development, Weibo device-ID matched ad delivery, and highly targeted Xiaohongshu (Rednote) Content SEO (CSEO) to rank your brand on the first page of organic search results. Partner with OctoPlus Media to turn active search intent into sustainable growth.
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