Amaru has announced that its subsidiary, M2B World Asia Pacific has entered into a strategic agreement with Beijing Baidu Netcom Science and Technology, a subsidiary of Baidu.com.
Amaru stated that this partnership involves M2B making available a WOWtv site customised for China and streaming free and legal video content from M2B’s infrastructure. Baidu, in turn, will drive internet traffic to the Chinese WOWtv site upon its launch.
Baidu.com’s search engine users would be able to avail a range of free and legal online movies, TV series and variety shows via video-on-demand streaming on the Chinese version of WOWtv.
Besides, the company believes that the partnership will enable M2B to expand its worldwide viewership by tapping into the fast growing online video and advertising markets in China. Industry estimates show that there are close to 180m online video users in China and online video is the second most popular internet application used there.
Colin Binny, president and chief executive officer of Amaru and M2B World Asia Pacific, said: We recently launched the WOWtv global site and continue to pursue our expansion plans in China through this strategic alliance with Baidu. Despite the current economic downturn, we see this period as an opportunity for us to grow our broadband businesses by harnessing the rapidly growing online advertising market as an increasing number of large scale advertisers start looking online due to tighter marketing budgets.
The Chinese version of WOWtv was launched on 15 May 2009.
