In December last year, BABA carried out an organizational restructuring, dividing the Taobao system headed by Jiang Fan into three parts. Tang Xing (Flower name Pingchou) was responsible for C-side products and technologies, Yang Guang (Fame blowing Snow) was responsible for B-side merchants and industry operations, and Liu Bo (Hua Mingjialuo) was responsible for commercialization.

At the end of November, LatePost reported that Zhang Yong was not satisfied with BABA's China Station, saying in an article on the intranet that BABA's business development was too slow and that he wanted to make China Taiwan thinner, agile and fast.

The two pieces of news point to BABA's current situation-- it's too huge. Large often means slow response, which means pulling and compromise. BABA urgently needs to tear down small units with agile bodies to respond quickly and respond independently.

Obviously, Pingchou is fully responsible for Taobian user products and technology, and has another appointment with the new retail intelligent engine business group, which is the focus of this round of adjustment.

To clarify the changes that have taken place and are taking place in Taobao needs to be traced back to BABA's round of organizational restructuring at the end of 2018. At that time, BABA newly established a new retail technology business group, integrating the technical strength of B2B, Taobao, Tmall, and so on, to form a unified strategy, that is, technology China and Taiwan.

In mid-2019, former iQIYI, Inc. CTO Tang Xing joined BABA as vice president, mainly responsible for Taobao Technology, Tmall Technology, Rural Taobao Technology, Xianyu's new retail technology group Amoy Department, to create a new retail intelligent business platform for the integration of consumers and merchants, and create a new scene-oriented new track.

If you saw the second half of the description of Tang Xing's duties in the news at that time, it would be clear to see the business that Tang Xing is responsible for (Taobao Live, etc.) and the promoted hand Amoy revision (try to internalize it).

However, Tang Xing is not responsible for all the technical business. According to the notice of organizational structure adjustment at the end of 2019, Zhou Jingren (alias Jingren), head of BABA's search and advertising technology department, reported to Cheng Li, CTO of BABA Group, and Jiang Fanshuang, president of Tmall, Taobao.

In March 2020, BABA was promoted to the list of senior managers of the Organization Department (promoted to M7 / P12). The position of Jingren is the head of the search and recommendation division of Taobao Enterprise Group; in August, the position of Jingren was BABA Group Senior Vice President and General Manager of BABA's mother Zhongtai Operations Department. Before the organizational restructuring in December last year, he was the president of the new retail smart engine business group.

According to the alphabet list, the new retail smart engine business group is a newly established department in the first half of last year, which mainly includes the search and recommendation department, BABA mother's technical team and other businesses.

The difference between Pingchou and Jingren's technical business can be illustrated by an example. Ping Chou once served as the technical commander of Tmall double 11 in 2019 and 2020, while the department of Jingren was responsible for recommending "guess you like" the algorithm of Taobao Master search and thousand faces.

The new retail intelligent engine business group is also known as AI Zhongtai internally, and in this round of adjustment at the end of last year, the search recommendation division was also in charge of Tang Xing. BABA's mother's technical team did not specify separately in the notice, but there was a business adjustment around the commercial side-- Jialuo was fully responsible for the construction and development of the platform commercialization system. BABA's mother business group reported to Jialuo.

From this point of view, this round of organizational structure adjustment will search, recommendation and other technical side of the business and the foreground business re-arranged and combined, Amoy system of technology and products have been merged similar items.

The difference between before and after the adjustment of the organizational structure can be understood in this way-before the adjustment, the central station transmits technology to the front desk business; after the adjustment, it is the coordination of technology and products, and the purpose of the adjustment should be faster response and higher cooperation.

The synergy here includes not only the collaboration of products and technology, but also the coordination of commodity recommendation and content recommendation.

Behind the organizational restructuring, Taobao is undergoing an overall change, from the bottom of the technology to the product logic, and extends to the commercial side.

A

Why did the search recommendation department in the new retail intelligent engine business group be handed over to Pingchou? it can be broken down into two questions: first, what is the significance of the recommendation algorithm to Taobi? Second, how can hand Amoy make recommendation algorithms play a greater role?

Internet giants are locked in a competition on the same topic-how to get regular users to contribute longer periods of time at a time when they are infinitely approaching the user ceiling? Wechat is doing video numbers, and Baidu, Inc. is trying to solve this problem when he wants to reconstruct the user system.

Taobao faces a similar situation. BABA's mobile MAU in China's retail market reached 881 million in September, leaving Taobi with room for natural MAU growth that is clearly close to peaking (as of June 2020, the number of Chinese Internet users was 940 million).

In the bilateral e-commerce market, the dual relationship that Amoy needs to maintain is the dependence of brands on Amoy and the viscosity of users on Amoy. Obviously, compared with the former, to C's handy Amoy user product system is a link that needs to be changed more by BABA. If it is not changed, the capacity of the flow pool cannot be expanded, which will lead to rising traffic prices and eventually affect the binding depth between the platform and merchants.

For Shoutao, which lacks the source of social traffic and the price of external content traffic is rising, increasing the frequency of users to open it in order to increase the number of daily active users and increase the duration of user use in order to maximize benefits.

On the client side, consumers' shopping habits are also changing. In an interview with Sina Science and Technology, Ping Chou pointed out that intelligent product flow recommendation is more in line with the habits of young users.

The iteration of this recommendation model actually runs through the entire development of the mobile Internet, first showing up on content products-Jinri Toutiao, which is good at algorithmic recommendation, split ads from Baidu, Inc. 's bowl, which is good at search.

E-commerce platform also has to face the shrinking proportion of search traffic in the market.In August 2018, Taobao released a new version, "guess what you like" rose to the second screen of the home page, "Tmall double 11 this year, personalized recommendation traffic, has exceeded the search traffic." Jiang Fan, then president of Taobao, said at that time.

The shrinking proportion of search traffic is almost irreversible, and the enemy of this centralized traffic is the increasing number of channels, which is shown by the fact that within Amoy, fragmented recommendation traffic is eroding the share of traditional search traffic. Douyin, Kuaishou Technology, WeChat group and other channels, the rise of Pinduoduo and other platforms make traditional e-commerce traffic scattered.

Fang Zhiwei, head of a cosmetics e-commerce in Shanghai, told the alphabet list that at present, the main flow channels of Amoy are hand Amoy search, hand Amoy recommendation, through train, super recommendation and so on.

Fang Zhiwei gave an example of the operation of a store. In 2019, among the free visitors, mobile search accounted for more than 20%, and the front page accounted for less than 10%. Last year, after the revision of handy Amoy recommendation, the proportion of handy Amoy recommended traffic was more than 25%. Manual Amoy search traffic accounted for less than 20%, "the traffic structure changes obviously. "

Li Feng, the founding partner of Fengrui Capital, analyzed the meaning of "guess you like" opponent Amoy from another angle in his speech last October. He believes that from the perspective of the structure of the traffic and the structure of the platform, if the positioning is narrower, the more definite the product and the fewer categories, the better the starting factors may be obtained from the flow.

"the reason is that what he recommends is no longer the store brand, but the relationship between the product and the product, so it skips the layer of the store brand and makes the recommendation, which is the greatest significance of Taobao revision. Li Feng mentioned that the more tags on the traffic structure, the more accurate the location.

According to this logic, the current JD.com, Taobao before the revision at the end of September and Pinduoduo represent two types of operation models, with the former leaning towards category operation logic and matching the shopping habits of users in the earlier era of the mobile Internet.

After users have a clear shopping demand for a certain category of goods, they need to enter the commodity information flow through the home search box, the first screen category channel or the active channel. the advantage of this mode of operation is that the payment conversion rate is the highest. but users' habits of consuming goods are being changed by personalized recommendations.

Pinduoduo is more inclined to commodity operation, APP home page categories, active channels occupy less, the first screen directly shows the commodity information flow, the advantage of this recommendation algorithm is that the granularity is finer, if the location is accurate enough, the population is wider.

Li Feng pointed out in his speech that the current traffic structure and platform logic have become more product-oriented, especially those with precision, niche and high certainty. "they will make the transmission of traffic and information more and more accurate, perhaps not accurate enough for the time being, but it is becoming more and more difficult for people who want to be affected by the platform to know the existence of this recommendation logic. "similarly, live broadcasts bring goods one product at a time, one product for each brand, and turn it into a popular style. this is also the logic of the product, not necessarily the logic of the brand.

Whether from the perspective of catering to consumer habits or from the perspective of fine operation, the meaning of "guess you like" counterpart Amoy is to increase the click rate and duration of users to cope with changes in traffic structure and shrinking search traffic. of course, the upward shift of "guess you like" further aggravates the status shift that is taking place between search traffic and recommendation traffic.

According to Fang Zhiwei, search traffic is always the traffic with the highest conversion rate of payment within the station, because it comes from users' active search, but the cost of paying for search traffic is constantly rising, and in terms of driving GMV efficiency, the current recommended algorithm is higher than all other means of hand Amoy, which has been verified by merchant sales data.

B

There is no need to elaborate on the significance of the recommendation algorithm to Taobi. in order to make the recommendation algorithm play a greater role, we can only start from two aspects: the first is to form an integrated and rapid response in the organization; the second is in the product, the internalization layout is integrated with the algorithm recommendation, which all point to the search and recommendation team to integrate into the product technical team, rather than as the middle desk to output technology to the foreground.

The "guess you like" in hand Amoy is also different from the commodity information flow on Pinduoduo's home page in two points: one is that "guess you like" is displayed in two columns, and Pinduoduo is displayed in a single column. From the product form, double-column display conversion efficiency is higher, single-column display is easier for users to immerse.

Liang Ning, the product manager, mentioned in the sharing last October that Taobao is doing keyword relevance and Pinduoduo is doing user understanding, trying to understand users' search motivations and preferences. The goal of Taobao is to let users find treasure, and Pinduoduo's goal is to make users addicted.

But with limited room for growth in the total number of buyers and rising number of sellers, Taobao, which lacks a link in social flow, also needs to make users sticky to APP, which points to the second difference between "guess what you like" and Pinduoduo's home page.

Pinduoduo's home page products are all displayed in thumbnails of picture and text. "guess what you like" is a mixture of picture and text and short video, which is presented in the form of partial internalization.

A businessman had previously told the alphabet list that Taobao waiter had encouraged merchants to release short video content in bulk.

Mobile Taobao's "guess you like" entrance is expected to switch to short videos in October, with no less than 400 short videos for some categories to be exposed during the Singles' Day holiday, according to a report on Yibang dynamic website last September.

However, Pingchou responded in an interview with Sina Science and Technology that the upgraded Taobao home page will still present a variety of content forms: short videos, live broadcasts, but pictures and text are still very important on the home page.

"'all short videos on the home page' is the biggest misreading of our home page upgrade. Short videos, pictures and texts, and live streaming are just forms of communication between goods and consumers, and we will not make an across-the-board decision. Whether to use video or picture and text depends on the matching degree of the goods and the wishes of the merchants, and the final data performance will speak. "

What is certain, however, is that hand Amoy is engaged in a more radical attempt to internalize than ever before.

In an interview with qubits after double 11 last year, Ping Chou said that consumers are not only "buying" online, but also have more "shopping while shopping" decision-making behavior, this change in the path of consumers choosing goods, is having a more fundamental impact.

"when you want to buy a mobile phone case, simple search and existing recommendation algorithms will not solve the problem. The information you want to know is which mobile phone case has a better product experience in actual use. "

Ping Chou pointed out that the internalization of e-commerce scenarios has actually become a necessity: the existing recommendation model has been unable to meet the needs of consumers. The combination of content and shopping can better adapt to the changes of consumer psychology and better meet the needs of consumers to make shopping decisions. In the next five years, all content fields will be e-commerce and all e-shopping malls will be internalized.

At the end of November, hand Amoy internal test "stroll", opened up a central content field. Its purpose is to supplement the link of consumer trust, and hope that users will form the mind of consumer content-based products in Taobao, making shopping become an internal self-generated flow pool, back-feeding Taobao ecology, in order to alleviate the problem of rising traffic prices.

In the previous organizational structure, the thousand-person thousand-noodle recommendation business of hand Amoy is the responsibility of the new retail intelligent engine business group responsible for Jingren. But the internalization of hand Amoy is a global action, and "guess what you like" is also an important content test field, but compared with shopping, the content is more marketable, which requires more coordination between intelligent recommendation and content ecology. The pace of Amoy technology and products is obviously more conducive to hand Amoy to try to internalize.

C

The changes on the traffic side will eventually affect the business side, which needs to be adjusted accordingly. In the organizational structure adjustment in December, Jialuo was fully responsible for the commercialization system of Taobi Department. BABA's mother and Tmall merchant marketing center (including the former Tmall brand marketing center and part of the commercialization team) belong to Jialuo.

In 2015, Zhang Yong, then BABA COO, said that in 2015, the most important key word for BABA's mother was "out of Taobao". The core was to transition advertising to digital marketing in a broad sense and sales to full-process and omni-channel user management.

The background of that year was that the traffic dividend in the mobile Internet era had just begun to be released, but with the disappearance of the traffic dividend, the coordination between Taos became more and more important.

During the adjustment in December 2019, Jiang Fan, on the basis of his duties as President Tmall of Taobao, was in charge of BABA's mother business group on behalf of the group, and President Zhang Yifen reported to Jiang Fan. The official reason for this adjustment is for coordination-BABA's mother, Taobao and Tmall will work together to promote innovation under the unified strategy of user products and commercial products.

According to earlier reports from LateNews, Zhang Yifen left her job in May last year. In August, Jia Luo, general manager of Tmall's platform operations department, was also general manager of BABA's mother's marketing department. "I am responsible for BABA's mother's big customers, strategy and ecology," he said in an interview with Beijing News. I am also responsible for the super brand day, small black box and Juhuashuo in the Taobao system, which is also the design of Laodan, keeping an independent brand and business department, but the business is integrated.

In this round of adjustment in December last year, Jialuo was fully responsible for the commercial system of Taobi, which means that BABA's mother has further integrated with the business of Taobi. The problem in front of BABA's mother is that both the traffic structure and the traffic media are changing, and the business side needs to follow the adjustment and achieve maximum coordination.

BABA's mother's main products are super drill exhibition (display advertising), super recommendation (information flow advertising), and through train (search advertising), which also account for the vast majority of merchants' promotion costs.

Fang Zhiwei told the alphabet that last year his stores mainly transferred the cost of the drill show to super recommendation and through train, of which super recommendation accounted for more than 50% of the total cost. Of course, different products have different delivery strategies in different life cycles, such as the new product period, the super recommended delivery cost will account for a higher proportion of the total cost.

Fang Zhiwei analysis, the through train is the need for users to actively search, for businesses is passive, the path is long, the efficiency is slow. However, the effect of super recommendation can be infinitely magnified by the recommendation algorithm, and the core is that the location of the population is accurate enough. "

The transformation of the status of search traffic and recommended traffic also means the status conversion of the two kinds of paid traffic. The problem facing BABA's mother is how to adapt to the change of traffic structure and traffic medium.This determines whether the referral revenue should be cut from BABA's mother's original advertising pool, and the incremental advertising will be shared by other channels in the market, such as Douyin and Kuaishou Technology, or join the competition for incremental advertising.

The final result depends on whether it can help businesses improve the conversion efficiency, if it can be improved, the merchants are more willing to pay, and the goal of doing increment will be achieved.

Fang Zhiwei told the alphabet list that its operating strategy this year is to increase the proportion of the total paid promotion expenses outside the station. In the beauty makeup category, the proportion of paid promotion is about 8%, and during the promotion period, it is less than 15%. In the past, the proportion of off-site paid promotion was generally less than 5% (3% Muo4%). Fang Zhiwei plans to increase this proportion to 6% this year.

"on-site delivery is recognized as the channel with the highest conversion rate, and merchants hope to get free search traffic in the end, whether they make super recommendations inside or outside the station. "Fang Zhiwei said that this is due to the high budget of marketing expenses for brands such as big brands and new brands, which makes the competition for advertising inside the station more fierce, and small and medium-sized businesses are in a relatively inferior position in this competition, and turn their attention to the outside of the station.

"the ROI we put in Douyin is generally 0. 8-1. 5 (beauty makeup, a health care category). According to the past selling logic, we are not willing to do offsite, because 0. 8% ROI means loss. "

Fang Zhiwei said, but now the decision-making path of consumers is to be recommended before buying behavior. If you put it outside the station, it will pull the search for natural traffic inside the station, such as placing a mask advertisement in Little Red Book. There will be users actively searching for the product on Taobao. "the ROI put into the station will reach at least 2.5. as long as we control the gross margin space and do fine operation inside the station, the efficiency will be improved and the proportion of off-site delivery expenses will be supported by gross profits. in the long run, it is also in line with the change of consumer habits. "

In short, BABA needs to help businesses improve their conversion efficiency, which is another reason why "guess you like" needs to move up.Moving up means the double expansion of the traffic pool and the advertising pool-in terms of usage, the advertising inventory of the information flow model is higher than that of the search mode.In this dimension of adapting to the changes in traffic media, BABA's mother launched super live streaming, super short videos and super interactive cities last year.

In 2016, Taobao completed the transition to wireless and began to enjoy traffic dividends, but the dividends must not be long before the operation was sustainable, and the new transition cycle had already begun when Jiang Fan announced that recommended traffic exceeded search traffic.