Consumers are being empowered with more information and choice: the rapid adoption of online search, shopping and purchasing shows how valued technology has become. It's very convenient. And it's driven up the market value of major providers in this space.
In the next five years, the media landscape will become far more personalised and participative. TV will still be there, but will have become interactive and across platforms just like other media to allow behavioural targeting at an individual level. Media will be built for and from the individual outwards.
Players who are the first to market more personally-relevant content will gain reward-based brand involvement. Apps offer plenty of scope for marketers to stand out. New technology coming along, such as HTML5, and Google+ (which no doubt will be emulated in China) will open up more responsive, richer experiences.
Things move fast in China, and can go viral in hours, particularly the phenomenon of China's online community mobilising to really make a difference on perceived injustices, corruption and mismanagement.
In a country this size, marketers tend to think about cascading out through first and second tier cities whereas there is plenty of evidence that tier 3 cities are often more attractive than tier 2 - and with far larger potential market sizes. There's plenty of room for growth as wealth spreads.