In September 2020, ByteDance launched a search bidding advertisement. In the Bytedance commercial advertising program, in addition to information flow advertising, search advertising is also added.

As early as 3 years ago, ByteDance began to enter the search business. On August 10, 2017, Toutiao search was officially launched. Subsequently, ByteDance successively acquired Hudong Baike and Baike Mingyi.com to improve search content.

ByteDance’s search service was initially limited to searches within the Toutiao site, and now it supports off-site searches, and has performed some search binding services with mobile phones such as Xiaomi.

Advertising is the main source of income for Bytedance. In 2019, its advertising revenue was about 120 billion yuan, accounting for more than 85% of total revenue. In contrast, Baidu’s online advertising revenue in 2019 was 78.1 billion yuan, of which online advertising related to search engines accounted for 72.7% of the total revenue.

According to StatCounter statistics, as of June 2020, Baidu’s search market share exceeded 60%, far surpassing the second-ranked Sogou search and the third-ranked Haosou.

Compared with Baidu’s bid promotion search, Toutiao search advertising does not show enough advantages in terms of content richness and technology.