Amazon has a diversified business model. In 2021 Amazon posted over $469 billion in revenues and over $33 billion in net profits. Online stores contributed to over 47% of Amazon revenues, Third-party Seller Services, Amazon AWS, Subscription Services, Advertising revenues and Physical Stores.
Apple has a business model that is broken down between products and services. Apple generated over $365 billion in revenues in 2021, of which $191.9 came from the iPhone sales, $35.2 came from Mac sales, $38.3 came from accessories and wearables (AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, HomePod, iPod touch, and accessories), $31.86 billion came from iPad sales, and $68.4 billion came from services.
Google (now Alphabet) primarily makes money through advertising. The Google search engine, while free, is monetized with paid advertising. In 2021 Google’s advertising generated over $209 billion (beyond Google Search, this comprises YouTube Ads and the Network Members Sites) compared to $257 billion in net sales. Advertising represented over 81% of net sales, followed by Google Cloud ($19 billion) and Google’s other revenue streams (Google Play, Pixel phones, and YouTube Premium).
Facebook, the main product of Meta is an attention merchant. As such, its algorithms condense the attention of over 2.91 billion monthly active users as of June 2021. Meta generated $117.9 billion in revenues, in 2021, of which $114.9 billion from advertising (97.4% of the total revenues) and over $2.2 billion from Reality Labs (the augmented and virtual reality products arm).
YouTube was acquired for almost $1.7 billion in 2006 by Google. It makes money through advertising and subscription revenues. YouTube advertising network is part of Google Ads and will generate more than $28B in revenue by 2021. YouTube also makes money with its paid memberships and premium content.
TikTok is a creative Chinese social media platform driven by short-form video content enabling users to interact and generate content at scale. TikTok primarily makes money through advertising, generating $4.6 billion in advertising revenues in 2021, thus making it among the most popular attention-based business models or attention merchants.
Pinterest makes money by selling advertising for marketers and companies that can gain visibility for their brands and more sales for their shops. In 2018, Pinterest made over $755 million in advertising revenue and it had 250 million monthly active users.
Twitter is a platform business model, monetizing the attention of its users in two ways: advertising and data licensing. In 2019, advertising represented 86.5% of its revenue at almost $3 billion. The remaining part is data licensing at 13.5% (over $465 millions) primarily related to enterprise clients using data for their analyses.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
