Youku Tudou Appoints COO, Reorganizes Content Management & Production

BEIJING: The Chinese Internet television outfit Youku Tudou has created two new business units, one of which will be dedicated to producing original TV dramas and web-native content, along with appointing Edward Su as its COO.

The new business units are Heyi Studios and Innovative Marketing. Youku Tudou's chief content officer, Sunny Xiangyang Zhu, has been appointed CEO of Heyi Studios, which produces original TV dramas and web-native content, and Yawei Dong, chief marketing officer, will head the Innovative Marketing Business Unit to develop programmatic advertising, video e-commerce, big data and other new marketing models. As a result of the change, Youku Tudou now has six business units: Youku platform, Tudou platform, Heyi Pictures, Heyi Studios, Innovative Marketing and Cloud Entertainment BU, which focuses on gaming and OTT.

As part of a restructure of its content management and production, Youku Tudou has formed nine content centers, based on content categories: TV drama center, news center, variety show center, movie center, game center, animation center, music center, education center and entertainment information center. Frank Ming Wei, president of Youku, and his team will manage content centers for TV series, news and education. Weidong Yang, president of Tudou, and his team will manage content centers for variety shows, entertainment information, animations and music. Allen Huilong Zhu, CEO of Heyi Pictures, will manage movie center. Leo Jian Yao, group CTO and president of Cloud Entertainment BU, will manage game center.

Additionally, Su has been tapped as COO, overseeing the sales team of Youku Tudou. Before joining Youku Tudou, he served as CEO of China Group for Havas Worldwide.

"With today's announcements, the framework of Youku Tudou's multi-business unit and content center structure is in place," said Victor Koo, the chairman and CEO of Youku Tudou. "We're well poised to rapidly ramp up our content creation, accelerate our revenue growth and diversification, and fully capitalize on the opportunities that the converging online and offline worlds bring us."