Social networking sites are difficult to make money on a large scale because they break the successful model of making money on the Internet. For an advertiser who wants to sell products and services, they have no way of knowing exactly who this group of people in the social network is and what they want. For a company that wants to sell products and services, Facebook is disruptive to the web, because those advertisers want traditional, organized content. Advertisers need their brands to be presented in a controlled environment, and the media environment helps enhance the value of the brand. Obviously, the uncertain media environment in social networking sites and the potential attacks from netizens make advertisers feel at a loss as to what to do.
Currently, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are ubiquitous, and they have become an important part of online culture. However, "Times" believes that social networking sites that use individual users to create content and rely on popularity to survive have no chance of making money. The reason why social networking sites cannot make money is because they break the successful model of making money on the Internet. Under normal circumstances, social networking sites provide a place for sharing with each other, writing blogs, and posting videos, but they are not regarded as commercial activities by brand advertisers. At present, the click-through rate of advertisements on social networking sites is also very low. In addition, the traffic of many websites itself is not high, so the cost-effectiveness of advertisements is not suitable. This is also an important reason that discourages advertisers.
Some people may ask, isn’t QQ very profitable? First of all, QQ has 700 million registered users, and tens of millions of people are online at the same time. Secondly, the media environment of the advertising space in the QQ chat box is controllable, and there will be no similar situations. There is a risk that forum messages may be accessed by others. Therefore, even if the click-through rate of a single advertising space is low, multiplied by the huge traffic, the cost-effectiveness of the advertising space is still guaranteed. Finally, the most profitable thing about QQ is its various value-added services.
Financial advertisers will place ads on AOL's business section and TheStreet.com, and avoid sites that feature videos of children. Google has also improved the search website model, allowing advertisers to purchase search bidding rankings, and the content of the search results page is presented based on Google's PR ranking technology, which meets "traditional, orderly" requirements.