Top of the big era

After meeting this group of people, Zhou Buqi met Zheng Xiaoli in the office, who had just been promoted to Yahoo's senior vice president and president of mobile business due to her outstanding achievements.

When Yahoo was originally acquired, the transaction price was as high as US$23.5 billion. This transaction has indeed caused great operating difficulties for Ziweixing International, and it has obviously fallen into a cash flow crisis.

But after surviving the short-term cash flow crisis, good times came.

Yahoo is no ordinary Internet company.

This is a first-class giant!

Its scale is much larger than emerging Internet companies such as Facebook and Ziweixing International, and is on par with Google. Its business basically covers the entire Internet industry.

The reason why the market value is so low is mainly because many of Yahoo's businesses are doing poorly.

There is no scale but no results.

After Zhou Buqi completed the acquisition of Yahoo after some operations, he mainly followed three steps.

First, redefine Yahoo’s core strategy and focus on the media business;

Second, spin off and sell off all non-core businesses;

Third, they brought Zheng Xiaoli, vice president of Ziweixing, from China and asked her to handle Yahoo’s mobile business, mainly Yahoo App and Yahoo News App.

After more than a year, remarkable results have been achieved.

In particular, the strategy of dismantling, selling, selling, and selling has greatly eased the operating pressure of Ziweixing International.

By selling 20% ​​of Alibaba shares and 20% of Yahoo Japan shares held by Yahoo, US$10 billion was raised; the sale of Yahoo Korea also raised nearly US$1 billion.

The merger of Flickr and Pinterest has just been completed, and it can also be valued at US$500 million to US$600 million.

In addition, it also sold some other assets of Yahoo and sold three subsidiaries, earning US$840 million. In addition, Yahoo has invested randomly in the past few years and invested in many no-name projects outside... These projects , Zhou Buqi didn't like any of them, but they were all worth some money. After the big sale, they recovered nearly 1.5 billion US dollars.

In other words, in the past year or so, Ziweixing International’s total revenue from the sale of Yahoo’s assets has exceeded US$14 billion!

The total purchase price of Yahoo by MSI was only US$23.5 billion.

At this point, Yahoo still holds 20% of Alibaba shares, and 15% of Yahoo Japan shares have not been sold.

It is not difficult to see why Carl Icahn's capitalist power spared no effort to confront Yang Zhiyuan and gain control of Yahoo.

This is a treasure!

As long as we take control and spin it off and sell it off, the core media business can still generate business profits of no less than US$1 billion every year...

What a good deal this is?

It's a pity that the management's appearance is too ugly, and the obvious ambition is disgusting. The founding team and management team represented by Yang Zhiyuan are strongly opposed.

So Zhou Buqi was given a chance.

Zhou Buqi's acquisition of Yahoo was not to make money from Yahoo. He wanted to get back what Yahoo had lost and make "Yahoo great again"!

A piece of pie successfully convinced Yang Zhiyuan.

Then, he started the same strategy as Carl Icahn and others, starting to dismantle and sell all the way, which was somewhat ironic.

However, after all, Boss Zhou is different from the jackals and tigers on Wall Street.

While making money, he really did what he promised.

Under the leadership of Zheng Xiaoli, Yahoo quickly completed the transformation from PC to mobile. The number of Yahoo App users is nearly 200 million worldwide!

Daily active users, more than 60 million!

From a mobile perspective alone, Yahoo App has become the veritable number one media platform, with overwhelming and generational advantages, and its activity level is not much worse than that of the social platform Facebook.

The Yahoo App was launched less than a year ago.

Such achievements can be said to have caused shock and madness to every foreigner here at Ziweixing International.

Zhou Buqi was very happy when he saw Zheng Xiaoli. He gave him a hug generously and praised: "Xiaoli, you are so up to date and so proud of me. Those foreign executives just said I went crazy when I heard about you, you have done a great job at Yahoo!"

Zheng Xiaoli pursed her lips, "What's crazier may not be the success of Yahoo App, but my advertising strategy, right?"

"That's what it should be!"

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and showed his full support for her.

Zheng Xiaoli was able to build the Yahoo App in such a short period of time and become one of the world's top apps. In addition to the users and brands that Yahoo has accumulated over the years, the biggest operating strategy is to spend money on advertising.

That advertisement comes out...

The American executives in the company were shocked.

Not to mention anything else, at this year's Super Bowl, Zheng Xiaoli spent US$12 million to buy two 30-second advertising spots during the prime period of the Super Bowl.

Including the production cost of the advertisement and the subsequent effects of the same advertisement on other platforms, the total cost was 20 million US dollars.

The effect is surprisingly good.

In the half month surrounding the Super Bowl, the number of Yahoo App users surged by 49 million.

Advertising space in the Super Bowl is a bit expensive, but the market effect is also great. Zheng Xiaoli has already said within the company that Ziweixing International will rush to advertise at every Super Bowl in the future.

In the past year, Zheng Xiaoli invested a total of US$980 million in advertising fees to promote Yahoo App! Especially in the past three or four months, the total investment in advertising has exceeded US$600 million.

Because there were too many advertising fees, Zhou Buqi came forward several times to give her the greatest support.

In fact, this is also the difference between Chinese and American Internet companies. One has a technological approach and the other has a trade approach.

Internet companies in the United States are more bold in investing in technology research and development, and are more cautious in investing in advertising. After all, it is a technology company, so it is natural for it to invest in research and development.

It is different in China. They are very cautious when investing in technology research and development, and when investing in advertising... each one is really more daring than the other. Later, those domestic apps that went to overseas markets really scared the whole world. The performance of Google and Facebook has soared, and their market value has reached US$1 trillion. The reason behind this is the surge in Chinese advertising fees.

Because Google and Facebook are the two largest advertising platforms in the world.

For the major domestic overseas apps, the two main platforms for advertising are Google and Facebook. These two companies immediately reaped huge advertising dividends, which really made the world aware of the "red ocean gameplay" of competition in the Internet market. It is really life-threatening. Throwing money.

The effect is also impressive.

Not to mention the European market, even Amazon, which has a monopoly advantage in the North American market, is almost unable to cover its coffin due to the impact of these domestic overseas e-commerce companies.

Zheng Xiaoli has such a fierce style, she dares to fight, she is decisive and sharp, and she does not even frown when she smashes advertisements.

But from the data point of view, it is not a waste.

With an investment of US$1 billion in advertising, the number of Yahoo App users is 200 million. On average, the customer acquisition cost for a single user is US$5, which is completely within expectations.

Zheng Xiaoli said with a smile: "The biggest contributor to the success of our advertising strategy is our domestic team."

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "Sending an expeditionary force from China on a business trip is the right path. We must continue to do so in the future."

Zheng Xiaoli said: "Well, their performance is very good. However, these people are mainly engaged in technology and products, and have little to do with the market. I am talking about the domestic team, the marketing team of the International Department located in Shanghai. "

"ah?"

Zhou Buqi was a little surprised.

Zheng Xiaoli said with emotion: "I have already felt that in the future mobile Internet world, China will have huge advantages, and the most important thing is the talent advantage. Some countries in Europe and the United States have talent, but it is too expensive; India and Indonesia are like this The labor force in these countries is not expensive, but the number of talents is too small. Only domestic talents are the most abundant, and the prices are not expensive. This is likely to become the biggest competitiveness of domestic Internet companies in overseas markets in the future."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Well, as long as it is not a field that is too sophisticated such as chips and AI, or a field that is relatively high-tech and does not require top-level technology such as mobile Internet, the huge number of engineers in the country will become the largest combat effectiveness."

Zheng Xiaoli said: "It's not just about the number of engineers, it's about comprehensive talents. Let's talk about Yahoo App's advertising. This is done by the kids in the domestic marketing department... You might not believe it if you tell me."

"Tell me?"

"In the past, Yahoo...including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Ford Motors, and Disney Movies, the advertising strategies of these American companies were basically the same. An advertisement requires continuous meetings at all levels to be precise. Craft it carefully, and then ask a film director to shoot it. Then, the advertisement is finalized, and the marketing team has to make strategies and operations around this advertisement. An advertisement will take at least a year."

"Isn't that right?"

Zhou Buqi was a little confused about this.

Because when he was making Yuanwei milk tea, he used the same advertising strategy and produced an excellent advertisement, which must be released for a long time.

After spending so much money and inviting famous directors and big stars to shoot an advertisement, we can't just abandon it after a few days of investment, right?

Zheng Xiaoli said: "That was the idea of ​​​​traditional advertising in the past, which was oriented to traditional media such as television. The logic of the Internet has undergone obvious changes. If you use traditional thinking to advertise on the Internet, you will be incompatible. The essence of advertising is not Whether it's beautiful or not is actually not that important at all. If it's a TV commercial, and it's going to be put on that big screen, it really should be as beautiful as it is. Especially for Super Bowl commercials, it has to be carefully considered and communicated over and over again. That's fine. But Internet advertising...especially online advertising on mobile phones, doesn't need to be like that at all. The small mobile phone screen can't carry so much weight, and it's not suitable for watching art movies, nor is it suitable for watching exquisite advertisements."