Shanghai will be turned into an international digital advertisement hub with increased efforts in a number of areas, according to a guideline released yesterday.

The guideline, the first of its kind targeting the development of the digital advertising industry in the nation, was jointly released by the Shanghai Administration for Market Regulation and the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Information.

By the end of last month, Shanghai had registered 558,000 advertising businesses, including 8,403 foreign-funded ones, according to the administration.

They recorded a revenue of nearly 200 billion yuan (US$30.76 billion) through the year with that from Internet media accounting for over 60 percent.

The city will develop new digital advertisement business models, step up technology applications, create an innovation design hotspot, promote intellectual property rights’ standard implementation and international exchange and cooperation, and fuel the development of the digital advertisement industry with financial services, according to the guideline.

The development of vlog, webcast, and social e-commerce networking platforms will be accelerated.

The city will also draft a batch of digital advertisement standards and enhance monitoring in the area at the same time.

Advertising companies are encouraged to apply digital technology in their creation of original works.