Capital-efficient media buying services deliver more growth, with more efficiency.
Capital-efficient media buying services deliver more growth, with more efficiency.
Across borders and industries, our expertise is growing our client's business.
Across borders and industries, our expertise is growing our client's business.
Paid Media Agency with Proven Results
Paid Media Agency with Proven Results
To navigate media buying investment, our first task is to question assumption.
To navigate media buying investment, our first task is to question assumption.
We look forward to hearing from you.
We look forward to hearing from you.
China is won inside the walls
Criterion Global is a leading independent international media agency, with a working history activating global brands into China through the platforms Western playbooks miss: Weixin (WeChat), Douyin, Xiaohongshu (RedNote) and Baidu.
China is the world's second-largest ad market and its most walled. As an independent China marketing agency, Criterion Global gives global brands entry through the platforms that own attention here (Weixin, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Baidu, Tmall), with transparent buying and copy built to clear China's advertising law.
China is the world's second-largest advertising market, and the one where the global playbook transfers least. Facebook has been unavailable on the mainland since 2009 and Google search since 2010, so attention is bought inside walled gardens instead: Tencent's Weixin, ByteDance's Douyin, Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Baidu search, and the commerce platforms of Alibaba, JD and Pinduoduo. Weixin and WeChat alone count 1.44 billion monthly active accounts, and online sales of physical goods reached 26.1% of all retail sales in 2025, so the media and the checkout increasingly sit inside the same app.
Because we buy media for global brands that need China to work alongside every other market, not as a separate silo. Criterion Global is independent and paid only by its clients, so the plan follows the audience rather than a holding-company trading deal. Our roster spans clients such as LIV Golf, whose Hong Kong campaign reached into Shenzhen, with an average client tenure of 5.5 years.
Almost none of it runs through Google or Meta, which are unavailable on the mainland. Digital marketing in China means buying inside Weixin and Douyin for social, Baidu for search, Tmall and JD for commerce media, and Xiaohongshu for discovery. The copy changes too: China's Advertising Law bans absolute claims like "the best", and KOL content has to be labeled as advertising.
Three things: direct buying across Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba and Baidu inventory; a compliance review that catches banned superlatives and undisclosed KOL posts before they run; and measurement built for closed ecosystems where each platform keeps its own data. Criterion Global builds all three into the plan and sizes entry to a Minimum Viable Market Investment℠ (MVMI℠) rather than a token test budget.
The rules are as distinct as the platforms. Article 9 of China's Advertising Law bans absolute claims such as "the best", "the most" and "national-level", with fines of RMB 200,000 to RMB 1 million, so the superlative-led copy of a Western launch deck can be unlawful as written. Since May 2023, the State Administration for Market Regulation's Internet Advertising Measures have treated livestream selling as advertising and required KOL content dressed as reviews or experience-sharing to be marked as an ad. In China, localization is a compliance job before it is a creative one.
Capital allocators are reading the market with the same discipline. Lazard's 2026 mid-year outlook notes consumer confidence near record lows and roughly a third of China's 2025 real GDP growth coming from net exports.* That argues for entering China deliberately, not for avoiding it. Criterion Global plans and buys inside the walls as an independent agency paid only by its clients, with spend sized through the Criterion Global Budget Blueprint℠ to a defined Minimum Viable Market Investment℠ (MVMI℠). *Lazard is a global media AOR client of Criterion Global, cited here for its published market analysis only.
