"Just the qualification to bid?" Huang He asked with a faint smile on his face.
"Of course, isn't that what your company wants right now?" Yang Zhiyuan said with a chuckle.
"Just a bidding qualification, not all server orders, and you want my QQ and Facebook homepage recommendations..." Huang He said, grinning. "Mr. Yang, do you know how much our QQ and Facebook homepage recommendation slots cost?"
"How could I possibly know that?"
"Alright, then let me tell you, our QQ homepage recommendation slot is 10 million RMB per month. For a year, to make it a round number, let's say 100 million RMB!"
"As for Facebook, the price is the same."
"Mr. Yang's request for these two recommendation slots, and for an unlimited period, if calculated over 100 years, it would be a full 20 billion RMB, which is 2.5 billion USD in advertising fees! Mr. Yang, asking for these things for just a bidding qualification, you wouldn't even dare to do it in your dreams!" Huang He said with a cold laugh.
"Boss Huang, you're quite the joker. As far as I know, your homepage doesn't recommend any website ad slots. How can you conjure up a year's worth of 100 million RMB ad slots out of thin air? There are probably very few people in this world who can lie with their eyes wide open like you!" Yang Zhiyuan retorted with a cold laugh.
"There wasn't before, but there will be next month!" Huang He smiled slightly and said, "Originally, this was news that was to be announced to the public next week. But since Mr. Yang has brought it up today, I'll let Mr. Yang have a preview. If Yahoo needs it, you can also pre-order the services above!"
As Huang He finished speaking, Leng Zhiruo beside him took out a laptop and, after some operations, displayed a PDF file to Yang Zhiyuan.
Yang Zhiyuan glanced at it, and his pupils instantly contracted.
Good heavens, the title of this file read "Jiangnan Advertising Alliance Opening Announcement and Quotation."
From the name, it was clear that Jiangnan was about to launch advertising services.
But this was also natural. For all websites or software that operated for free, their best way to profit was through advertising.
And according to the description in this promotional flyer, the Jiangnan Advertising Alliance was actually a unified advertising business alliance that brought together all the advertising resources under the Jiangnan Group, forming a unified platform for external openness and inquiries.
All these website resources included QQ, as well as various website pages under QQ; Facebook; QQ Game Center; Jiangnan Mall, and Jiangnan Search.
In addition, there were offline Jiangnan blind boxes, Tangren Films, and a wider range of advertising resources under the Jiangnan Council.
Therefore, this list of advertising resources was quite extensive, spanning a full 38 pages and listing over 460 different advertising resources, all clearly priced on this list.
And at the very top of the list was the QQ homepage recommendation.
According to the description, on the page that opened QQ, there would be five fixed advertising links on the side and top UI borders. Users only needed to click the buttons to jump directly to the corresponding websites or competitors' software through QQ.
This also had a nice name: QQ Express Lane.
This was the most expensive advertising position in the entire advertising alliance, so it enjoyed two pages of introduction, with the most text dedicated to various success stories.
The first case mentioned was Facebook. According to the case, after Facebook gained a QQ homepage express lane button, it attracted over 17 million visitors in a week, with over 4 million registered users. It currently had 20 million registered accounts and had become a leading social networking site in the country.
The second case was for the QQ Game Center.
The third case was for Jiangnan Mall.
The fourth case was for QQ Farm.
Good heavens, they had listed all of QQ's major flagship products.
Although this looked like bragging, it had to be said that the various data listed were very detailed, even including some operational strategies.
This made any buyer who saw this copy unable to resist the desire to place their own product on the QQ homepage for advertising.
In fact, Huang He wasn't lying. Anyone could imagine how much traffic a QQ homepage express lane button would attract when QQ was at its peak.
Looking at it from the perspective of 2021, it would be like all WeChat users suddenly discovering that a pinned WeChat official account had forcibly appeared on their page. The immense traffic value that official account would instantly gain.
This was something that Yang Zhiyuan himself understood very well. This was why he wanted the QQ and Facebook homepage link positions. After all, QQ and Facebook currently held the largest traffic in China, along with very high user stickiness.
Yahoo China's development had been somewhat bumpy. In its competition with Sina and Sohu, it found that despite being a company with hundreds of billions in capital, it couldn't defeat these two small companies with only a few hundred million RMB. This was quite embarrassing for Yahoo.
Therefore, when Yang Zhiyuan learned that Jiangnan Group wanted to bid for servers, he immediately thought of using this leverage to attract traffic to Yahoo China's homepage from Jiangnan Group's main products.
This was definitely a win-win business. After all, what he was offering was merely a chance to bid. Whether the bid would ultimately be awarded to Jiangnan Group was another matter.
Because Yang Zhiyuan realized that QQ's homepage had always only featured its own products, and there was no indication that Jiangnan Group was going to operate an advertising business. So he thought this was a great opportunity. If Huang He didn't realize its value, Yahoo China would make a huge profit.
After all, this wasn't a major cost for Jiangnan Group. It could be achieved with a simple hotfix. Of course, Yang Zhiyuan also knew that he was getting a great deal. So, he thought that if Jiangnan Group agreed to the deal, he would give Jiangnan Servers a small order of around 10 million USD, which would be considered a gesture to appease Jiangnan Group.
He hadn't expected that Jiangnan Group was already preparing to commercialize all the advertising resources under the group, and had even prepared such a detailed business plan. This indicated that Jiangnan Group had already been working on this aspect for a long time, and had even completed most of it. They were about to sell these advertising resources to the market.
Moreover, the prices were completely listed on the list. The most expensive, naturally, was the QQ Express Lane, priced exactly as Huang He had said, 10 million RMB per month.
Of course, this didn't mean that one had to buy a month or more of advertising at once. In fact, this advertising quote was quite flexible. The price for a one-day advertising express lane was 1 million RMB, and the longest term was one year, priced at 100 million RMB.
In short, the longer the purchase period, the more cost-effective it was.
Of course, this didn't mean that cooperation would end after one year. It meant that the prices would be renegotiated after one year. According to Jiangnan Group's intentions, this quotation sheet would be revised annually, and the prices would likely become increasingly higher.
In addition to purchasing based on time, there was also a method of calculating based on traffic attracted. For every IP click attracted through the express lane, QQ would charge 0.5 yuan as a traffic fee.
However, this calculation method did not limit the advertising positions. QQ would arrange the positions where these ads appeared, and they would be billed based on the attracted traffic. So, it didn't matter where they were placed, as long as they could attract traffic.
All in all, this was a very complete business plan with deep insights into online advertising. It was clear that it was formulated by very professional individuals. Therefore, Yang Zhiyuan realized that it was probably impossible to appease Huang He with just a bidding qualification.
What, you ask how Yang Zhiyuan could be sure that this was a very complete plan?
That's because Yahoo's main profit also relied on advertising. Last year, Yahoo had profits as high as 3 billion USD, and these profits came entirely from the various advertisements embedded within Yahoo. Yang Zhiyuan was one of the people who understood online advertising best.
However, Yang Zhiyuan felt that he still needed to try. So, Yang Zhiyuan said, "Boss Huang, we are conducting commercial cooperation, not a sale of advertisements. So, it's meaningless for you to show me this. We should talk about cooperation."
"Alright, how about this: If Mr. Yang can guarantee to give all the orders totaling 2 billion USD to our Jiangnan Servers, then the QQ homepage express lane and Facebook homepage express lane for the next 3 years will be yours. What do you think?" Huang He said dominantly.
"Only three years? Even according to your pricing, the cost for three years would only be 600 million RMB, which is not even a fraction of 2 billion USD." Yang Zhiyuan's face twitched.
"But we're not getting Mr. Yang's 2 billion USD for free. We'll be providing servers of equal value. If you trade with other manufacturers, you'll only get servers."
"Furthermore, three years is not just selling for 600 million RMB. The price for the first year is lower because our alliance has just been established, and we're using it to attract customers."
"We estimate that starting from the second year, the price will increase by 50 million RMB per year, and by another 50 million RMB in the third year. After that, prices will be adjusted based on market conditions and user numbers, but they will never be lower than 200 million RMB per year," Huang He said with a smile.
"Then your price is too expensive!" Yang Zhiyuan said.
"Expensive?" Huang He smiled slightly. "As far as I know, if you want to buy Yahoo's homepage image recommendation slot, the price per day is 1 million, but it's 1 million USD, which is 8 times more expensive than our QQ price. It seems we still have a lot of room for price growth."
"Heh heh!" Yang Zhiyuan gave a dry laugh. "Boss Huang, it's not that I'm bragging, but QQ is still a great distance from Yahoo."
"Is that so? The total number of registered users on our QQ has already exceeded 100 million, with an average daily active account of over 13 million. But as far as I know, Yahoo USA's total number of registered users is less than 30 million, and the average daily active account is only four to five million. Yahoo USA's user base is far smaller than our QQ!"
"Who is really farther behind whom?" Huang He exposed him mercilessly.