Advertising on Baidu: How To Open a Baidu Union Account? - Marketing China
Olivier Verot is the founder and CEO of Gentlemen Marketing Agency (GMA), based in Shanghai since 2012. He has set up and managed Baidu ad accounts for foreign brands entering China for over a decade. Baidu is still the search engine you cannot skip if you sell in China. A good SEO strategy gets you […]
Olivier Verot is the founder and CEO of Gentlemen Marketing Agency (GMA), based in Shanghai since 2012. He has set up and managed Baidu ad accounts for foreign brands entering China for over a decade. Baidu is still the search engine you cannot skip if you sell in China. Agood SEO strategygets you found for free over time, but if you need volume now, you buy it. That is what the Baidu Union account is for. Baidu Union is Baidu’s advertising network, the closest thing China has to Google AdSense and the Google Display Network combined. It is also the account structure most foreign companies get wrong on their first try, which is why we are updating this guide for 2026: the rules changed, the review got stricter, and AI search is starting to eat into what a Baidu ad can do for you. Key TakeawaysBaidu Union is Baidu’s ad network, running your ads across search results, apps, and partner websites, not just the Baidu homepage. Foreign companies can open an account without a China entity, but you need a valid business license, a compliant landing page (ICP filing only if it is mainland-hosted), and a deposit. 2026 review is stricter: Baidu now checks business scope match, corporate verification, and landing page compliance before approval, not just paperwork completeness. AI search is cutting into Baidu’s ad business. Revenue from search ads dropped in 2025 as more Chinese users ask DeepSeek or Wenxin directly instead of clicking a link. GEO (generative engine optimization) is now a real budget line, not a buzzword, alongside PPC and SEO. Keyword research for Baidu is not a copy of your Google list. Search behavior, phrasing, and intent differ. Do not run PPC alone. Track results weekly and combine it with organic and GEO work. What Is Baidu Union?Baidu Union is the ad network that sits behind Baidu’s search engine. It is a group of sites and apps, from news portals to music and utility apps, that display Baidu’s paid ads in exchange for a revenue share. When you open a Baidu Union account, your ads can appear on Baidu’s own search results page, but also across this whole partner network, in feed placements, banners, and video slots. In practice this means two different products under one roof: search ads, which show up next to organic results when someone types a query, and display or feed ads, which appear inside apps and websites based on user profile and behavior rather than a search term. Most of our clients start with search ads because intent is higher, then add display once they have a working landing page and enough data to target well. How big is the network in 2026Baidu does not publish a single “reach” number the way Meta does, but the direction is clear from its own 2026 conference disclosures. Baidu Union now works with over 10,000 advertisers across 113 verticals, and overseas local direct clients now make up more than 80% of certain high-value categories such as finance, health, and home goods, according to figures Baidu shared at its April 2026 Baidu Union conference. Wenxin Yiyan, Baidu’s AI assistant, passed 200 million monthly active users, up more than 300% over eighteen months, which matters because Baidu is folding more of that traffic into its ad and content network rather than keeping it separate. (Sina Finance, April 2026)Account Opening Requirements for Foreign Companies in 2026You do not need a China entity to open a Baidu Union or Baidu PPC account. You do need three things ready before you start: a valid business license (your home country registration document works, translated and notarized), a landing page hosted correctly, and a deposit. On the landing page: if your site is hosted on a mainland China server, it needs an ICP filing from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. If it is hosted outside mainland China, in Hong Kong, Singapore, or anywhere else, ICP filing is not legally required, and most foreign brands run their Baidu-facing landing page this way to skip the filing process entirely. Companies without a mainland entity that still want a filing can apply through a registered representative office, but for most first-time advertisers, hosting outside mainland China is simpler and faster. On the deposit: the standard first top-up on a Baidu Marketing (百度营销) account starts around 6,000 RMB, though the exact figure depends on your industry and the agent handling your account. This is a media budget deposit, not a service fee. On review: 2026 approval is noticeably stricter than it was two years ago. Baidu now checks three things closely: that your declared business scope matches what your website actually sells, that your corporate documents pass verification against your registration, and that your landing page is compliant and matches your ads. Mismatched documents get rejected on the spot rather than sent back for correction. Review takes about three working days when your file is complete, sometimes same-day. If you already had an account flagged or rejected before, our companion guide onwhy websites get rejected for a Baidu ads accountcovers the most common failure points we see with foreign clients. Setting Up Your Baidu Union AccountOnce your base Baidu account exists, the next step is the Union account itself, and this is where most foreign companies want help. You will need to assign an agent, and picking one who actually understands paid search on the Chinese market matters more than price. A good agent optimizes bids, reads the data correctly, and stops budget from leaking into low-quality placements. AtGentlemen Marketing Agency, this is a large part of what we do. We set up Baidu accounts, Baidu PPC accounts, and Baidu Union accounts for foreign brands entering China, and we manage the account after launch so budget does not get wasted in the first month while you learn the platform. DeepSeek and AI Search Are Eating Into Baidu’s SEM DominanceThis is the part of the 2026 picture that changes how you should plan a Baidu budget. Baidu is no longer the default answer box for Chinese internet users the way it was five years ago. DeepSeek’s site traffic hit 541 million monthly visits in May 2026, up over 11% month over month, ranking first in China and fifth worldwide for that month. Across the AI search category, Douyin’s Doubao holds around 32% share, DeepSeek about 28%, and Alibaba’s Quark 15%, with Baidu defending its position through a hybrid “traditional search plus AI answer box” model rather than pure organic dominance. (Sina Finance, June 2026)The effect on Baidu’s own ad business is visible in its earnings. Baidu’s core advertising revenue, still over 70% of its core business, fell around 2% year over year in Q2 2025, a decline the company itself linked partly to AI-generated direct answers replacing the click a paid ad depends on. Baidu’s response was to push AI-generated content into search results themselves, and by some counts AI content now makes up roughly 64% of mobile search result pages. For advertisers, this means fewer users scroll past the answer box to click a normal search ad than before. None of this makes Baidu ads useless. It means the easy click is getting harder to buy, and you need a second channel working alongside PPC. That channel is GEO. GEO: The New Frontier Next to Baidu PPCGenerative engine optimization, GEO, is the practice of getting your brand mentioned and recommended inside AI answers, on DeepSeek, Wenxin, Doubao, and similar tools, instead of only ranking in a list of blue links. Where SEO chases a position on a results page, GEO chases a citation inside the answer itself. For a decision-maker, the practical difference is this: a user asking DeepSeek “which company handles X in China” either gets your name in the answer or does not, and there is no bidding your way into that slot the way there is with PPC. The market size backs up why this matters now. Industry estimates put China’s GEO-related market at roughly 127 billion RMB in 2024, jumping to about 280 billion RMB in 2025, and projected near 560 billion RMB in 2026. That is a market appearing almost from nothing in three years. We wrote a full breakdown of what this means in practice inGEO in China: why your website is invisible to DeepSeek, which is worth reading alongside this guide if you are budgeting for both PPC and organic visibility in 2026. Our take: do not drop Baidu PPC for GEO. Run both. PPC still buys you immediate, controllable volume. GEO builds the kind of structured, well-sourced content that both ranks in Baidu SEO and gets picked up by AI answer engines, which compounds over time in a way a paid click never will. Display Network CPC Benchmarks for 2026On Baidu’s feed and display network (信息流广告), average cost per click in 2026 runs roughly 0. 5 to 10 RMB, a wide range that depends heavily on industry, targeting precision, and creative quality. Intent-based targeting, showing your ad to someone actively searching related terms, tends to cost less and convert better than broad interest targeting. Beyond CPC, Baidu also offers CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and oCPC, an automated bidding model that optimizes toward conversions rather than clicks once your account has enough conversion data to train on. Most of our clients move to oCPC after the first month, once there is enough volume for the algorithm to learn from. Ad placement optionsBaidu Union gives you three broad placement choices. Standard placement puts your ad in a fixed spot on a partner site. Intelligent placement lets Baidu’s system choose the best spot based on user data, which usually performs better once your account has history. Custom placement lets you pick specific sites or apps yourself, useful if you know exactly where your audience spends time. Keyword research and monitoringKeyword research on Baidu is not a translation exercise. Chinese users phrase queries differently than English users do, and Baidu’s own suggestion tools and keyword planner will show you volume and competition data Google’s tools simply do not have for the Chinese market. Build your list from Baidu-native data, not from translating your Google Ads keyword list. Once campaigns are live, check performance weekly at minimum. We use Baidu’s own AI-driven analytics to watch which placements and creatives are actually converting, then reallocate budget away from what is not working. PPC alone, without this weekly review, is close to setting money on fire. Case Study: Cutting Cost Per Lead With a Combined Baidu and GEO ApproachOne of our clients, a European kitchen appliance brand entering the China market in 2025, came to us with a Baidu Union account that had been running for four months with almost no leads. The account was live, the deposit was spent every month, but cost per click sat around 8 RMB with a landing page that had never been touched since launch. We rebuilt the keyword list from Baidu-native search data instead of the client’s Google Ads list, cut out broad match terms pulling irrelevant traffic, and rewrote the landing page in Mandarin with proper product specifications and a clear form instead of a translated brochure page. At the same time, we published a set of structured comparison and specification pages built for GEO, the kind of content DeepSeek and Wenxin can extract and cite directly when someone asks about that product category. Over the following three months, average CPC dropped from 8 RMB to about 5. 2 RMB as quality score improved, qualified leads increased by roughly 40%, and cost per lead fell by about 35%. None of this came from a bigger budget. It came from fixing the keyword targeting and giving both Baidu’s algorithm and AI search engines content actually worth showing. Preparing for a Baidu Paid Advertising CampaignBefore you commit budget, walk through this list:Get your legal documents ready: business license, translated and notarized, plus any industry-specific license your category requires. Decide your landing page hosting: mainland China with ICP filing, or outside mainland China without it. Match your ad review timeline to this choice. Build a keyword list from Baidu-native data, not a translated Google Ads list. Set a realistic first deposit and a monthly budget you can sustain for at least three months, not one. Decide now whether GEO content sits alongside your PPC launch or comes later. Waiting costs you months of AI search visibility you cannot buy back with ad spend. Assign someone, in-house or an agency, who checks performance weekly from week one. Why Work With GMA on Baidu AdsWe have opened and managed Baidu Union and Baidu PPC accounts for foreign brands since 2012, so we know what gets an account rejected before it happens. We handle the account setup, the keyword and landing page work, and the weekly optimization, with GEO content layered in so your ad spend and your AI search visibility work toward the same result. Contact usand we will look at your account or your launch plan for free. FAQCan a foreign company open a Baidu Union account without a China entity?Yes. You need a valid business license from your home country, translated and notarized, plus a compliant landing page and a deposit. A China entity makes some steps faster but is not required to get approved. What is the minimum deposit to start advertising on Baidu?The standard first top-up on a Baidu Marketing account starts around 6,000 RMB, though the exact amount can vary by industry and by the agent managing your account. This funds your ad spend, it is not a separate service fee. Does AI search mean Baidu ads are less useful in 2026?Baidu’s search ad revenue did drop in 2025 as more users get direct answers from DeepSeek and similar tools instead of clicking links. Baidu ads still deliver volume and control you cannot get elsewhere, but we now recommend pairing PPC with GEO content rather than relying on PPC alone. What is GEO and do I need it alongside Baidu PPC?GEO, generative engine optimization, is building content structured so AI tools like DeepSeek and Wenxin cite your brand directly in their answers. It works over a longer timeline than PPC but is not something you can buy your way into with ad spend, which is why we recommend starting it early, alongside your paid campaigns rather than after them. How long does Baidu account approval take in 2026?About three working days with a complete, compliant file, sometimes same-day. Review is stricter than in past years: mismatched business scope, unverifiable corporate documents, or a non-compliant landing page will get you rejected rather than sent back for correction.