Advertising Remains the Most Obvious Internet Business Model: Amazon, Apple, and Spotify Move Toward Ads
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Collected in Robin Shen’s Field Notes · Content type and attribution are shown above
English translation of the Chinese post originally published 2022-09-16. Translated 2026-10-30 with AI assistance. Historical figures and claims have not been updated or independently verified. 中文原文
Reading guide
Robin observes that advertising remains the most obvious way to monetize an internet business, including for Google and Facebook. Amazon’s advertising revenue, he says, was already measured in tens of billions of U.S. dollars. He describes Apple as eager to enter the advertising market aggressively, while Spotify was repositioning itself away from an emphasis on music streaming and toward building the largest audio-advertising platform. These are his observations from September 2022. The figures are as stated in the post and have not been independently verified.
Key points
- Advertising remains the most obvious way to monetize internet businesses.
- Amazon’s advertising revenue was already at a ten-billion-dollar scale, according to the post; not independently verified.
- Apple is described as wanting to enter the advertising market.
- Spotify was repositioning toward an audio-advertising platform, as observed in September 2022.
Full text — English translation
These articles are personal notes, book excerpts, and collected reprints. Figures and events reflect the time of the original publication, are not current information, and do not constitute investment advice.
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