Milestone

Thursday, Week 25, March

During this cycle, Fang Qiang led Dong Junda and Pan Feiwen to complete the development tasks of the advertiser access and developer access modules handed over by Lu Zhou. Zhou Wen also completed the integration of the corresponding modules under Lu Zhou's guidance.

Lu Zhou, on the other hand, handled the servers delivered by Huiteng on his own. He divided the ten servers into different functional areas, deploying applications, databases, and memory cache libraries separately.

Currently, version 1.0 of Dream Grain Advertisement has been officially developed and deployed and will go live as scheduled next week.

However, Tang Yutong and Meng Xiaoqin from the market team encountered some difficulties during the advertiser access process on Monday and Tuesday, and progress was not smooth.

In 2010, most game developers still didn't have a clear concept of distribution channels. Their games were mostly distributed through their own official websites or some fan forums. The overall means of market promotion did not have a clear methodology.

Now, with an unknown new advertising platform actively contacting them and asking them to spend money on advertising on the platform, it seemed like an impossible situation for success.

At this point, Lu Zhou's only breakthrough tactic, the development progress of the banana market, was still in the testing phase, making it unrealistic to offer subsidies and promotions recklessly.

So, on Wednesday, Lu Zhou had to adjust the strategy.

Helpless, Lu Zhou instructed the two members of the market team, "Choose clients among the game developers you have contacted before who have shown clear interest. Dream Grain Advertisement will provide subsidies for three to five companies from its own pocket. Once the clients are confirmed, their accounts will be credited with ten thousand yuan of trial funds when the platform goes live."

He then instructed Pan Feiwen to add callback interfaces for the CPI model SDK to the developers' integration. This way, besides the Dream Grain Advertisement's advertiser backend, game developers could also write their own interfaces to obtain real-time information on promotional installations.

The strategy adjustment was also aimed at tapping into the vulnerabilities of the developers' psychology. After all, Dream Grain Advertisement was still weak in its early stages of development and had no negotiation chips. It could only rely on free services and real results to convince the developers.

While providing them with ideas, Lu Zhou couldn't help but complain about these developers. "These developers are so arrogant. We have to subsidize their advertising costs and provide data interfaces. Wait until the banana market is launched, and let's see how tough they are in a year or two. Within half a year, some clever Chinese developers may see something from the 70-30 revenue sharing on Apple's App Store, but most developers haven't realized the power of distribution channels yet. Once Dream Grain Advertisement's channel is truly formed, most developers will become 'slaughtered lambs'..."

This remark gave Tang Yutong and Meng Xiaoqin a bit more determination. With Pan Feiwen's assistance in technical integration, the two of them finally reached an agreement and confirmed the integration of three game developers on Thursday afternoon.

Having three developers subsidized as successful cases for demonstration would be enough. As for adding more developers, it would only be a waste of money, feeding more "wolves." After all, every penny spent on subsidies to developers would ultimately be paid by Dream Grain Advertisement.

In the next one or two years, the revenue sharing ratio for Android app distribution channels would gradually rise from 0 to 30 percent.

As for distribution channels like Penguin and others with a multi-product ecosystem, their channel fees would account for up to 90 percent. This means that for every 100 yuan earned by application developers from users, they would have to give

90 yuan to Penguin.

Ha-ha, earning one billion in monthly revenue as an independent developer of games or applications is impressive!

But sorry, please leave 90 million as distribution fees.

Alright, if you don't want to pay, no problem. I can still make a fortune by promoting my own products and easily defeat you.

Oh, you want a better deal? No problem, exchange channel resources for shares and become a partner. Then, you'll get some preferential treatment.

That's the real power of holding distribution channels.

"Ha-ha. In the future, Dream Grain will let them experience the true meaning of terror," Lu Zhou thought.

As for the integration of developers into the modules, it progressed smoothly. Lu Zhou instructed Tang Yutong to step up contact with Qian Du for marketing, and they ended up purchasing some competitive advertisements with keywords like "how to make money from Android development" and "Android application development."

At present, Dream Grain has preliminarily confirmed the intentions of nearly a hundred application developers. Once Dream Grain Advertisement goes live, they can immediately review and integrate with the developers.

Naturally, Tang Yutong and Meng Xiaoqin were busy with numerous integration tasks, contacting advertisers, dealing with Qian Du's marketing calls, and answering developers' inquiries about integration processes.

Tang Yutong even appeared exhausted and complained to Lu Zhou, but before Lu Zhou could console her, another wave of developers arrived with inquiries.

"Xiaoqin, get ready to recruit more personnel and arrange expansion after the launch next week..."

Who knows, Lu Zhou couldn't help but detect a hint of a threat in Meng Xiaoqin's resentful eyes.

"Do you want to work me to death? *%￥#..." Lu Zhou imagined.

Of course, Meng Xiaoqin, being a lady, wouldn't think that way.

"Cough, cough. Everyone, the milestone of Dream Grain Advertisement 1.0 is approaching!"

"This week, everyone has completed their respective tasks as scheduled. Our market team members, Xiao Tong and Xiao Qin, have contacted several game companies and secured the first batch of users for Dream Grain Advertisement. Currently, the development team is working hard to provide all the technical support Dream Grain can offer to the developers who have joined us, aiming to ensure smooth operation by next Monday. Tomorrow, Xiao Tong will contact several portal websites' technology channels to understand the publication process and whether it requires payment, establishing Dream Grain Advertisement as the first mobile internet advertising company in China."

Tang Yutong started complaining, pulling at her short hair, looking like she was about to go crazy.

Lu Zhou, "..."

"For now, let's set aside the banana project for next week and let me take over the development. You can help Xiao Tong and the others with their workload."

Wang Zhengye looked confused. It was clear to everyone present that the two beautiful women from the market team had been extremely busy lately, frequently seeking assistance from Lu Zhou. Now, he found himself being thrown into the mix for no reason.

"Well, it's not my strong suit, you know, communication. It's a bit challenging for me," Wang Zhengye said hesitantly.

Meng Xiaoqin quickly responded, "It's alright, Xiaoye. Developer inquiries don't require phone calls; you can communicate with them through typing. Besides, you're part of the development team, so it should be easier for you to communicate with the developers."

Tang Yutong also understood Meng Xiaoqin's intention. "Come on, Xiaoye. The developers' questions are usually straightforward."

...

Under a series of persuasive words, Wang Zhengye, who was not good at expressing himself, eventually gave in and agreed.

Seeing this, Lu Zhou could only silently cross his fingers in his mind, thinking, "I must be out of my mind to trust you two mischievous fairies. With nearly a hundred developers, it will take you a whole day, Xiaoye..."

Lu Zhou decided that after the launch of Dream Grain Advertisement 1.0, he would immediately start recruiting more personnel. Currently, everyone at Dream Grain was working at full capacity.

"Alright, next week is the launch of Dream Grain Advertisement, and it's also the moment to evaluate our team's performance over the past two weeks! The programmers are working hard. Tomorrow, conduct thorough testing to ensure a flawless launch on Monday."

...

Monday morning.

There were a few hours left before the official launch in the afternoon. The functions of the website, developer backend, and advertiser backend had already been deployed by the development team members and were accessible.

The developer backend was already in use, allowing developers to manage routine tasks and configure and debug some API interfaces freely. The only thing they couldn't access was the callback data of the advertisements.

Lu Zhou considered that the applications submitted by developers to the backend were of varying quality, and since Dream Grain could only provide a subsidy of 30,000 yuan for advertising costs this time, he could only open it to a select group of developers as part of an internal testing process.

In this round of testing, ten developers' applications qualified, and they would be able to access the CPI (Cost Per Install) advertisement callback data provided by Dream Grain.

CPI advertisements refer to a payment model based on the number of installations. Lu Zhou chose the CPI ad model for a simple reason: each phone has a unique IMEI identifier, and when the program reads the IMEI and returns it to Dream Grain's ad server, it counts as a valid installation. This eliminates cheating behavior where a single phone has multiple installations, making it more efficient compared to other models.

Other advertisement models like CPS would need to be tested and gradually introduced after this internal testing phase.

"Junda, double-check the callback data for developers. Zhou Wen, this developer's API configuration has some issues, assist them in resolving it..."

"Xiaotong, confirm the specific publication time with the responsible person from the portal. Xiaoqin, contact the advertisers and inform them that the advertisements will be officially launched after 2 PM, and they can check the backend data later..."

Half an hour left until the official launch.

Each developer had integrated the SDK according to their own requirements.

Soon, Dream Grain's servers would return actual ad data to the developers who qualified for the internal testing, and the billing would begin. Dream Grain would pay them one cent for each valid installation.

Therefore, when the 30,000 yuan advertising budget would be exhausted was still an uncertain factor.

After all, with a unit price of one cent, it would require installations on three hundred thousand devices.

It was possible that the developers' users might not be interested in the ads, and it could take several days or even months to complete this internal testing. On the other hand, users could have a strong response to the ads, generating a massive amount of traffic in an instant.

"Fang Qiang, double-check the server load to ensure it won't crash if the traffic suddenly surges..."

After completing the testing, Lu Zhou scheduled the data callbacks as a timed task.

At this moment, developers, advertisers, and Lu Zhou himself were all focused on their respective backend data, waiting silently for the designated time to arrive.