Platform Monetization: Strategies, Challenges and Implications

Funding level: National

Funding agency: Italian Ministry of University and Research

Abstract:

As platform monetization is a pressing challenge for modern internet businesses, the goal of this project is to deepen our understanding on the monetization of the platform business model. To be more specific, we want to understand the dynamics of how a platform ecosystem evolves overtime, investigate the impact of various monetization strategies on platform business model, and design the optimal pricing strategies of a platform under different conditions. To address these issues, this project leverages qualitative methods, natural experiment, analytical models as well as machine learning techniques to provide a holistic view on the issue of platform monetization. We mainly focus on answer the following questions:

1) How do digital platform ecosystems emerge and evolve? What is the impact of platform monetization on the governance of digital platform ecosystems? 

2) How do the monetization policy changes impact the supply concentration? Do they impact the product diversity of the platform? 

3) How to design advertising strategy to create value for and thus attract participants from both sides of a social media platform?

4) What is the optimal platform pricing strategy considering markets where users on both sides might experience wait times?

Disa role: Partner - Local Unit

DiSA Team Leader: Leonardo Corbo

DISA Team members: Andrea Lipparini

Project Coordinator: Università Bocconi di Milano

Start date 28/09/2023 - End date 27/09/2025

Total project cost: 232.326 euro

Funded by European Union - Next Generation EU