For a long time, Google has been one of the major service platforms for domestic companies going global. From the annual changes in Google's customers, one can discern the latest trends in Chinese companies' overseas expansion.
On June 20th, Google held its annual Google Marketing Live conference, where it jointly announced with Kantar the top 50 global Chinese brands. Well-known giants such as ByteDance, SHEIN, Xiaomi, Huawei, and Lenovo are all included in the list. The gaming sector also has numerous companies on the list, including Tencent, NetEase, miHoYo, Dot & Dot, and 37 Interactive.
According to Google's report, even facing the challenge of a slowdown in global economic growth, the brand power of the top 50 global Chinese brands still achieved a 17% increase, which is more than double the average growth rate of previous years. The category with the largest share of brand power is still consumer electronics (25%), but the smart device industry's brand power growth is the most significant, reaching 61%.
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In an interview, when First Financial asked about which industries Google has observed growing rapidly in terms of going global, Deng Hui, Vice President of Sales for Google's Large Customer Department in China, said that traditional retail and the strong overseas expansion of domestic games have seen significant growth. In addition, more niche sectors, such as financial services in Southeast Asia, have done well, and various favorable policies have allowed the tourism market to recover well this year, with opportunities for growth in both inbound and outbound tourism in various regions.
Furthermore, Zhang Jun, Vice President of Marketing Insights and Solutions for Google Greater China, found that the momentum of two less mainstream industries going global is also quite prominent. "One is short dramas. Although they are not new to going global, we have felt that the momentum of short dramas has been increasing over the past year. The second is AI-related productivity tools. In the application of going global, it feels like the wave of AI is rolling quite fast."
Zhang Jun stated that the team conducted an internal study and found that there are already more than 20,000 AI-related tools and applications on Google Play and Apple Store, with many Chinese developers participating.
Regarding the hottest AI large models this year, Google stated at the conference that it has begun to apply its capabilities to overseas expansion and marketing, including data analysis and operations, as well as channel analysis for advertising. In the implementation of generative AI, Google has observed that the retail and gaming industries will take the lead. Deng Hui explained that AI can empower advertising materials, and the categories of retail and gaming have more flexible requirements for materials. "Because they need to continuously launch new products and games, they may have more changes in this area and use AI more."
Currently, companies are facing some challenges in implementing generative AI. Google found that 63% of companies encounter immature data infrastructure issues, 57% lack support from the leadership within the organization, and it is crucial for decision-makers in companies to have the financial strength and determination to do this. Additionally, 45% of companies face the issue of not having a fully verified ROI (Return on Investment). "Everyone ultimately has to account for the bottom line in business, and ROI actually has a lot of uncertainty," said Deng Hui.
"We are actually communicating with many customers, and they agree with this direction, but they encounter problems in the implementation process, such as how to use my data to train AI," Deng Hui illustrated with an example. When translation needs are implemented in e-commerce or gaming scenarios, companies often need to use their own data to train it, making the AI model better. In these scenarios, specific development is often required, and not all companies can cross this step.
Deng Hui believes that how companies combine the application of AI with their own scenarios and industries requires a lot of technology and talent, and even cooperation with third-party companies. In his observation, companies are both excited and worried about the arrival of AI. They are excited because AI can bring breakthroughs to their business, but they are also worried because there are costs to entering this field, whether it is the cost of basic data infrastructure or talent, and these are all bottlenecks."Many companies have actually seen the opportunity of generative AI, but to truly break through or explode, it might require a bit more time to allow businesses to really integrate it with their own operations," said Deng Hui.
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