Interview with Zhang Chaoyang: Sohu wants to spend more money to buy dramas

In terms of video business, Sohu does not have a major capital operation plan and will resume its offensive trend of top content, including the purchase of important TV series, increasing investment in homemade dramas and movies. In addition, the strategy also includes continuing to develop PGC content and improving advertising. Big data support from the system.

Sohu officially launched the intelligent stock market broadcasting system "Smart Offer" today, which uses robots to automatically track and capture stock market dynamics and publish information in real time. Zhang Chaoyang, chairman of Sohu Company, said in an exclusive interview with the media that the system is mainly to change the asymmetry of stock information among investors in the past and make investment more rational.

Obviously, this is an attempt by Sohu News in intelligent transformation.

Zhang Chaoyang said that in the past two years, Sohu has carried out a series of product development and preparation, and next, Sohu's news client, videos, Sogou, and games will have new actions. Among them, the leader is the media information reform. Sohu News's development direction is to rely on Sohu News's editorial department to select recommendations, and on the other hand, it is intelligent robot recommendations to recommend personalized content from public accounts and other channels to users.

The fourth quarter of 2015 financial report showed that two years after Zhang Chaoyang returned, Sohu is still facing a relatively severe situation this year.

Sohu Q4's total revenue was US$466 million, down 2% year-on-year and 11% month-on-month; the net loss was US$31 million (in the previous quarter, Sohu relied on the movie "Pancake Man"(revenue of US$29 million) and the disposal of Changyou's web game business Seventh Avenue turned around (revenue of approximately US$70 million), and fell into a loss this quarter).

In terms of revenue, among Sohu's three major businesses, media and video advertising revenue declined slightly month-on-month, search advertising increased slightly month-on-month, and game revenue declined significantly month-on-month. Eventually, overall revenue declined. The company's gross profit margin and expense ratio are still at a relatively high level.

Specifically, Zhang Chaoyang said that in 2016, Sohu will have a strong offensive in Sohu News client, video, Sogou, games, and technology, products, publicity, and marketing in every field.

In terms of video business, Sohu does not have a major capital operation plan and will resume its offensive trend of top content, including the purchase of important TV series, increasing investment in homemade dramas and movies. In addition, the strategy also includes continuing to develop PGC content and improving advertising. Big data support for the system; Sogou is basically the second largest search engine in China and will further narrow the gap with Baidu; games will pay more attention to the operation of "Dragon Babu".

It is worth noting that. Zhang Chaoyang also finally mentioned that the data fraud of some news and video products is serious now, and Sohu will insist on using transparent operating data to communicate with external customers.

Editor: kong