“I certainly dislike forced pop-up ads, but that’s exactly the effect we want. Whether you want to see it or not, you have to see it. The decision to watch ads shouldn’t be up to the customer—it’s up to us. Also, the pop-up ads need to be enticing. When the customer clicks to close, not only should the ad not close, but it should also hijack the customer to our game’s homepage.”

Grace Bennett scratched his head. “Sigh, even though we’re both internet companies, I’m afraid there’s a huge difference in philosophy between us and your company.”

“What do you mean?” Charles Reed asked.

“Sorry, we can’t accept this kind of ad.”

“Why? You don’t even want us to give you money?”

“No reason.” Grace Bennett said, “Living in this world, whether as a person or in business, you have to have a bottom line. It’s like when you’re really hungry and you see a piece of bread that’s fallen on the ground. It might not look great, but if you pick it up and peel off the outer layer, it can still fill your stomach.”

“But if that piece of bread fell on a pile of shit, and you still pick it up and eat it, then even you would look down on yourself.”

“Forget it, I won’t waste your time. Minister Reed, you’d better find someone else.”

With that, Grace Bennett hung up the phone directly.

……

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”

In an office in a high-rise building, a woman in her thirties, dressed in a business suit, with a sharp and mean expression, slammed her desk hard.

“That damn guy! He’ll never get a single cent of ad orders from me in his life!” Charles Reed roared, furious at Grace Bennett’s stubbornness.

Suddenly~

The office door was pushed open. Charles Reed hurriedly straightened her shirt and hair, stood up, and put on a fawning smile. “Mr. Bolton, you wanted to see me?”

A middle-aged man didn’t enter, but stood at the doorway and said, “Little Reed, how’s the contact with Sky Eye going?”

“I just got in touch.” Charles Reed frowned and said, “They refused to run hard ads, only agreed to give us four banner spots. With such little sincerity, I turned them down.”

“Don’t!” Mr. Bolton looked a bit anxious. “The tech department just told me that since last night, Sky Eye’s traffic has skyrocketed. Today, it’s expected to double again.”

“Double again? Wouldn’t that be three million daily visits?” Charles Reed was shocked.

You know, even the strongest streaming site, Douyu, only has about twelve million daily visits. Sky Eye has been online for just a week and already has a quarter of Douyu’s traffic? That growth rate is faster than a rocket!

What Charles Reed didn’t know was that last night, after receiving a payment of 100,000 yuan, Grace Bennett immediately rented four top-tier servers. Coupled with Grace Bennett’s technical skills, Sky Eye’s computing power was now on a whole new level.

“That’s not even the most important part. The key is that the Search for Wushuang incident is starting to have international influence. There’s more and more discussion on Facebook and Twitter.”

Mr. Bolton said, “After all, Douyin has an international version, and lots of foreigners play it too. Our company has always planned to enter the Japanese and Southeast Asian markets. Maybe this is our opportunity!”

“No matter what, I’m ordering you now: contact Sky Eye immediately and buy up all their ad slots!”

……

The train quickly passed Jinling, getting closer and closer to Pengcheng.

Grace Bennett never expected that Charles Reed would actually call him back.

“Minister Reed, 250,000 per week, that’s really the lowest I can go. These are full-page, large ads, and the price is only this good because it’s a bundled deal. If sold separately, it would be at least 400,000 per week.”

“Sorry, our company isn’t registered with the Administration for Industry and Commerce yet, so we can only go through private channels.”

“No reason, this is the internet age. Once you have a good idea, you just roll up your sleeves and get to work. Registration can be handled later. We’re all in the internet business—you should understand, time is life for us.”

“Alright.”

“Booking four weeks of ad slots, no problem.”

“I’ll give you an email address in a bit. Send me the ad samples and I’ll have the backend process them.”

“Okay, see you, looking forward to working together.”

Grace Bennett hung up, his heart pounding, so excited he almost wanted to stand up and shout.

A million!

Unbelievable—he’d actually landed an ad contract worth a million!

Chapter 010: Family Crisis

No one knows who started the trend, but these days, many cities build their high-speed rail stations in the middle of nowhere, then fence off huge tracts of farmland to create so-called new districts, all in the name of boosting economic development.

However, after the new districts and high-speed rail stations are built, the supporting transportation can’t keep up. Every time he goes home, Grace Bennett has to squeeze onto a crowded bus for a long time.

But now, Grace Bennett is a different person. With two orders this month—from the mobile game company and Henry Parker—he’ll be bringing in over a million yuan. And as Sky Eye continues to grow, similar ad orders will only become more frequent. So he cheerfully called a Didi.