PurposeWeChat is the largest acquaintance social networking platform in China, in which users can view and reshare web pages shared by friends. This paper aims to analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of web pages diffused in WeChat and advice on commercials.Design/methodology/approachA large number of web pages diffused in WeChat are collected and exclusively divided into four categories according to their titles, including advertisements, news bulletins, holiday greetings and emotional essays. For each web page, an information cascade (tree structure) is constructed to describe the diffusion trace. Based on the categories, the spatio-temporal popularity is characterized; the topological, temporal and spatial properties are examined; and the spatio-temporal diffusion velocity is explored.FindingsThrough comparative analysis, different categories of pages show diversity. For spatio-temporal popularity, there is no significant difference in cascade size; holiday greetings usually last for a relatively short time on average; emotional essays are more likely to spread to more provinces. For topological, temporal and spatial characteristics, the diffusion process of advertisements is more likely to be broadcasting than other categories; news bulletins and holiday greetings have an obvious bursty; the number of viewing behavior decreases from east to west in general. For spatio-temporal diffusion velocity, emotional essays diffuse the fastest in topological and spatio-temporal dimensions.Originality/valueThese findings contribute to promoting products and providing support for data driven modeling of information diffusion and human activity in spatio-temporal dimensions.