For many years there has been a focus on delivering connectivity and devices to provide for Internet access in countries and markets that had little access. This hard work is paying off, and today many nations that suffered from digital divide are now connected and can access the Internet readily.

But with this success, an even greater problem has arisen – without the ability to understand English, the Internet is limited to local language content. In many countries, this can be very limited in volume as well as value. Like the English language Internet in its early stages of development, many developing countries are now at a stage where the Internet is useful for communications and entertainment – but it has yet to reach a level of maturity in local language where it can be used as a tool for mass commerce and education. This phenomenon is known as "Information Poverty".

Currently, only 13.83% of all content on the Internet is in Asian languages. Chinese, Japanese and Korean account for nearly all of this. All other Asian languages combined account for just 0.03%. If you are Asian and do not speak English, your Internet world is probably very small.

Asia already has 44% of all Internet users globally and is expected to reach 50% in 2012. Although growing rapidly, Internet use in Asia today is still in its infancy. At just 23.8%, the Internet population penetration rate across Asia has significant growth potential, while Western markets are reaching saturation points as high as 74%.

Another way to look at this is that the next billion Internet users will come mostly from Asia. Yet, even with so many Asians online now and coming online in the near future, there is very little content in Asian languages to support them. This is where Asia Online plays a key role – addressing Information Poverty.

Asia Online hosts a series of consumer-oriented Portals that provides public access to global information, news, science, education, literature and more in local Asian languages.

Using state-of-the-art translation systems and crowd-sourcing, Asia Online is delivering vast volumes of high value internet content through web 2.0 style portals, with diverse content sources and fully integrated social networking functionality.

Asia Online launched its Thai language portal in January of 2011, by translating all 3.6 million pages of the English language Wikipedia into Thai in less than a week. Additional content and languages are now being prepared for launch, with up to 100 million pages of content in each of 11 Asian languages planned in the near future. Asia Online’s translated portal initiatives were quickly labeled the “The Largest Translation Project…So Far” by leading industry analysts.

Asia Online is a content delivery company, and its corporate goal is to provide Asian nations with the same level of access to knowledge and information enjoyed by many of the world’s developed nations. Asia Online is offering a totally unique and groundbreaking service: enabling established English language publishers to reach out to a new and untapped audience - the hundreds of millions of non‐English speaking Asian Internet users.

Whether you are a niche publication wishing to expand into the local language of your primary market, or a global business looking to expand at a regional level to reach hundreds of millions of new readers, Asia Online can help publishers reach a new audience, increase revenues, and raise the profile of their brand.

By delivering the majority of local language content to Asian nations, Asia Online expects to attract a massive user base. This user base shall have access to the range of featured content provided by Asia Online’s publishing partners. A range of commercial agreements are available to monetize content for publishing partners.

The Asia Pacific region is home to roughly half of the world’s population, and the countries in this region have been enjoying remarkable growth in recent years. Access to the Internet is recognized as being a key factor in economic and social development by regional governments, and as a result online penetration rates are spiraling upwards. However, rising Internet usage has highlighted the problem of “information poverty”. Asia Online’s mission is to address the lack of local language content in Asia.

Asia Online offers global advertisers a unique opportunity to target Asian Internet users in their own language, across vast quantities of informative and entertaining content. Currently, the Asian local language Internet is dominated by low-value content delivered by outdated websites. Asia Online gives advertisers the delivery medium that the market has been waiting for – rich content with a rich web 2.0 front-end. Targeting up to 100 million web pages per language across Asia on a vast array of topics, Asia Online provides a unique opportunity to target your messages to users interested in very specific topics. Proprietary search functionality provides exclusive access to this unique content, further enhancing advertising effectiveness.

The Internet advertising market in Asia is in a dramatic stage of growth. Current expenditure rates are highest in Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, according to Asia’s leading online advertising network Aktiv Digital, whilst growth is fastest in the South and South East Asian arena in countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Vietnam and the Philippines. This booming Asian online advertising industry means that regional advertisers are now in a position to invest in regional campaigns targeting regional consumers.