The mainland ad market, which had total revenues of 107.8 billion yuan (US$13.03 billion) in 2003, is poised for an increase of around 40 per cent this year, to lead all other countries and regions in terms of growth, according to the China Advertising Industry Association.

At yesterday's bidding session, the highest-priced advertising slot during any TV drama for next year went to Wahaha, a local soft-drink company, but advertisers came from a wide range of sectors, from the oil industry to household-goods suppliers.

As well as the unprecedented growth occuring in the mainland's mass-media advertising market, targeted, or the so-called "narrow", advertising platforms are also seeing strong growth and are attracting increasing attention from overseas investors.

One such example is Goldman Sachs' US$30 million capital injection into mainland flat-screen advertising company Focus Media, prior to that company's IPO launch announced this week.

The investment is being seen as a milestone in the development of the mainland's ad industry. Focus Media, which was only launched in January 2003, claims that it has already expanded its operations - such as running ads on flat screens placed in lift lobbies of office buildings - to 37 cities, including Hong Kong. It says it is reaping nearly 400 million yuan (US$48.36 million) in monthly revenues.

Earlier, company chairman Jiang Nanchun was quoted as saying it plans a NASDAQ listing sometime between March and May 2005.

According to Zhang Yining, leader of the Internet-based Narrow-ad Association, around 3,000 mainland companies have already chosen to advertise on so-called narrow ads - ads on media like the lift lobby flat screens that target a specific audience - rather than on traditional mass-media platforms like television.

Figures from iResearch show that the size of the mainland's 2003 online ad business was 1.08 billion yuan (US$130 million), as compared with 490 million yuan (US$59.25 million) in 2002. In 2004, that figure is expected to be 1.8 billion yuan (US$217.65 million).

At the same time, the demand for advertising professionals is also on the rise. According to the China Advertising Industry Association, there were 14,591 vacancies for advertising staff in July, 14,745 in August and 14,999 in September.

All signs point to the fact that, even before the local media industry has opened up completely to competition, it has already become large enough and is growing fast enough to attract the attention of many international investors.

According to a report by mainland Internet business channel HC360.com, under China's WTO commitments, the mainland's advertising industry is scheduled to become fully open to international competition and investment at the end of 2005. However, since the end of 2003, foreign investors have been allowed to own a majority share in a local advertising company. Over this period, a number of large merger-and-acquisition deals have taken place.

In 1979, the mainland's advertising market was worth only 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million), with business spread among a few dozen ad companies. By 1989, just 10 years later, the market had grown to 2 billion yuan (US$241.83 million). In 1999, the value of the market reached 62.2 billion yuan (US$7.5 billion), and in 2003, it was worth over 100 billion yuan (US$12 billion), or close to 1 per cent of mainland GDP.

The industry also accounts for some 870,000 jobs.

According to recently released figures from Ernst & Young, the global advertising market this year is expected to be worth around US$350 billion, while the Asia-Pacific region is expected to record a growth rate of 5.4 per cent over the past year, ahead of every other region