Oct. 31, 2008 (China Knowledge) - Alibaba.com<1688>, a leading B2B e-commerce portal in China, confirmed it has issued the termination letter to Baidu on Oct. 10 to end advertising on Baidu.com, sources reported.

A spokesman of Alibaba said it decided to pull the advertisement because of Baidu's poor advertising effectiveness and the page views on Baidu.com can hardly meet the specific need of small- and mid-size Alibaba's customers, which were showed by latest survey. Baidu's website traffic has been declining year by year and lots of ineffective anonymous traffic has been seen.

The spokesman added Alibaba.com may cooperate with Google and Yahoo in the future after ceasing advertising on Baidu.

Taobao.com, an online auction site also under the Alibaba Group, has stopped advertising on Baidu.com since 2007, and its website traffic surged 180% by end-Sep mainly due to its efforts to block off inappropriate Internet search services since November 2007, said the company.