Running Baidu PPC without industry benchmarks is like navigating Shanghai without a map — you might get somewhere eventually, but you will waste a lot of budget along the way.
On June 3, 2026, Baidu rolled out its Industry Insights tool to all advertisers. This new feature gives you direct visibility into how your account stacks up against competitors in your industry. For international brands entering the Chinese market, this is the closest thing to a market intelligence dashboard Baidu has ever offered.
Let us walk through what this tool does and, more importantly, how to use it to improve your campaigns.
🔍 The Three Problems This Tool Solves
Before Industry Insights, overseas advertisers on Baidu faced a common set of blind spots:
| Problem | What it meant for your campaigns |
|---|---|
| No industry reference point | You had no idea if a 3% CTR was good or terrible for your sector |
| Black-box conversion settings | You picked conversion goals without knowing what actually works in your industry |
| Timing guesswork | You ran ads at random hours, hoping for the best |
Industry Insights addresses all three — and it lives right inside your Baidu search ad management dashboard.
📊 Feature 1: Industry Performance Benchmarks
The core of the tool is a benchmark dashboard that shows where your account sits relative to the industry percentile.
What you see:
- Actual metrics comparison: clicks, conversions, spend, CTR, conversion rate, conversion cost
- Industry percentile bands (top 10%, top 25%, median, bottom 25%)
- Your account highlighted against the industry curve
How to use it (step by step):
Step 1: Log into your Baidu search ad management dashboard and navigate to the Industry Insights section.
Step 2: Review the "Industry Performance Data" panel. Look for metrics where you fall below the median.
Step 3: Prioritize the biggest gap first. If your conversion rate is in the bottom 25% but your CTR is above average, focus on landing page and conversion optimization rather than ad copy.
Step 4: Set specific targets based on the percentile data. Aim for the top 25% in your primary KPI, not an arbitrary number.
🎯 Feature 2: Industry Conversion Target Recommendations
One of the trickiest parts of setting up Baidu campaigns for overseas clients is choosing the right conversion target. Baidu offers many options: form submissions, phone calls, online consultations, WeChat follows, and more.
Industry Insights now shows the top 5 conversion targets used by competitors in your industry, along with their share of total spend.
What to check:
- Your current conversion target highlighted in green if it is among the top 5
- Industry-wide adoption rates for each conversion type
- Spend distribution across conversion goals
For example, if you are running B2B campaigns and discover that "online consultation" accounts for 45% of industry spend while your account uses "form submission," it is worth A/B testing the consultation conversion goal.
⏰ Feature 3: Traffic Timing & Competitive Heatmaps
This feature alone can save you 20-30% in wasted ad spend.
Industry Insights generates two heatmaps:
- Traffic availability heatmap: Shows when Baidu search traffic is highest in your industry (darker = more traffic)
- Competitive intensity heatmap: Shows when competition is fiercest (darker = more advertisers competing)
The sweet spot:
The tool automatically recommends optimal ad scheduling — time slots where traffic is high but competition is moderate. You can apply these recommendations to your campaigns with a single click.
Real-world example:
A B2B industrial equipment advertiser we worked with was running ads 24/7. After implementing Industry Insights timing recommendations, they:
🔑 Feature 4: Keyword Opportunity Discovery
Industry Insights also surfaces keyword opportunities — search terms that generate good traffic volume but are not yet highly competitive.
What you get:
- A list of potential keywords with impression volume, competition level, and suggested bid
- Keywords ranked by opportunity score (high traffic + low competition)
- One-click add to your ad plan or campaign
⚙️ Feature 5: Process Indicator Insights
Beyond the industry-wide view, a second module called Process Indicator Insights drills into your account-level mechanics:
- Keyword funnel analysis: Compares your account's "keywords with spend" ratio and "keywords with conversions" ratio against industry peers at the same spend level
- Bid competitiveness: Shows your average target conversion bid against the industry average, helping you identify if you are underbidding
Use case:
If the tool shows your account has only 15% of keywords generating conversions vs. an industry average of 35%, your keyword pruning and negative keyword strategy needs attention.
📋 Quick Start Checklist
✅ 7-Step Quick Start
- Navigate to Industry Insights in your Baidu ad dashboard
- Review your industry performance percentile for each KPI
- Compare your conversion target against industry top 5
- Apply recommended ad scheduling from the heatmaps
- Review keyword opportunity suggestions and add promising ones
- Check bid competitiveness and adjust if below industry average
- Set up a monthly review cadence to track progress against benchmarks
🌍 Why This Matters for International Advertisers
Baidu's advertising ecosystem has historically been opaque to foreign brands. You knew your own account data, but had no window into whether your performance was competitive.
Industry Insights changes that dynamic. It gives you:
As one of our clients recently put it: "I finally have a dashboard I can show my CFO."
🚀 Getting Started
The Industry Insights tool is available now to all Baidu search ad accounts. No special application or upgrade is needed. Simply log into your Baidu search ad management platform and look for the new "Industry Insights" section.
If you do not have a Baidu PPC account yet, or if you need help interpreting the industry data for your specific sector, our team at Baidu PPC Pro can help you get set up — and make sure you are using these benchmarks to their full advantage.
Ready to Make Data-Driven Decisions on Baidu?
Talk to the BPP team. We will walk you through the Industry Insights benchmarks for your sector and show you exactly where your campaigns stand.
Contact BPP →