Baidu Will Acquire Japanese Advertising Company

Chinese search engine company Baidu announced that they will acquire a controlling stake in popIn, a native advertising company in Japan.

According to the terms of the transaction, popIn's existing management team will be able to independently operate its businesses within the enterprise architecture of Baidu. On the completion of the acquisition, Baidu's advertising platform will adopt popIn's READ technology and content recommendation technology to improve its accuracy of advertising.

Public files show that popIn is a native advertising and service-oriented intelligent content recommendation platform for news media. Its READ technology can measure users' acceptance of contents and implement advertising recommendations accordingly. By December 2015, over 200 major news websites and information media platforms in Japan used popIn's READ technology.

Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, told local Chinese media that Baidu has been closely watching the development of global advertising businesses and technologies. They hope to introduce popIn's technologies into China and the global market.

For overseas expansion, Baidu's international business general manager Hu Yong said that Baidu will apply its technologies in international products; meanwhile, they will bring advanced international technologies into China.