Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com (SOHU) has won an advertising bid for China's CCTV by beating a number of traditional industry competitors.

This is the first time that Sohu.com has gotten so involved in the fierce competition to bid for advertisements during CCTV's section that begins after the nightly half-hour news broadcast and before the weather forecast. It is reported that Sohu has spent more than CNY20 million on the 7.5 seconds of advertising.

The winning of the advertisement bidding of CCTV is said to be the first step that Sohu.com has taken in implementing its Olympic strategy. The company will hold various Olympic-related activities following this to further carry out its Olympic marketing.

With the initiation of CCTV's ads bidding, portal website competition for Olympic marketing has expanded. Liang Xiaotao, director of CCTV's News Center, says though web portals have been well recognized by advertisers as online transmission agents, they still think highly of the unique chance provided by television. Therefore, they have come to spend huge sums of money on CCTV, the most popular transmission channel in China.