正確理解Facebook收入暴漲 賣廣告依然能賺大錢

Facebook is really two companies for the price of one: A really nifty, visionary, we’re-going-to-change-the-world innovator and a mind-numbingly technocratic/grind-it-out money-making machine.

社交網站Facebook有兩張面孔：一張是時髦且富有遠見、志在改變世界的創新者；另一張則是單調乏味技術專家式加埋頭苦幹的賺錢機器。

Let’s take the second first. The company reported full-year earnings Wednesday, and by any measure Facebook is an impressive business. Largely by selling ads that run on cell phones, Facebook’s 2014 revenue increased 58% to $12.5 billion. The company earned almost $3 billion. Nearly 900 million people used Facebook daily during December.

我們先來看看Facebook的後一張面孔。上週三，該公司公佈了全年營收，不論以何種標準來衡量，其業績都相當不錯。2014年，Facebook的營收增長58％，達到125億美元，主要來自移動端廣告銷售。Facebook2014年淨利潤將近30億美元。截至去年12月，每天有近9億人使用Facebook。

Unless your exceedingly interested in the intricacies of advertising technology, there’s almost nothing interesting about how Facebook makes money. Listening to a discussion of its financial results is a forced march through the muddy fields of organic impressions, increasing velocity of advertising efficiency, right-hand rails, and the like. In discussing Facebook’s desire to be a good partner to software developers, Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to the company’s efforts at building a “cross-platform platform.” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, piped in that “our ultimate goal is to be the critical business partner to our clients.”

除非你對複雜難懂的廣告技術非常感興趣，否則，Facebook的盈利模式聽起來相當無趣。聽人討論其財務業績，簡直好比在泥地裏強行推進，令人痛苦不堪，耳邊充斥着各種術語：有機曝光次數、廣告投放率遞增速度、右側欄，凡此種種，不一而足。談到Facebook希望成爲軟件開發者很好的合作伙伴，公司創始人兼首席執行官馬克o扎克伯格稱，Facebook正努力建設“跨平臺平臺”。Facebook首席運營官謝麗爾o桑德伯格插話道：“我們的最終目標，是成爲客戶的關鍵商業夥伴。”

Yawn-inducing, perhaps, but powerful too. Facebook now gets nearly 70% of its revenue from mobile devices, up from nothing a few short years ago. Considering its rapid growth, it is astounding that revenue from ads that run on desktop computers re only growing at a 1% clip for Facebook. It’s worth repeating: Not very long ago desktop ads were all that Facebook had. Facebook also has a balance sheet nearly as big as its 2014 revenues: It ended the year with $11.2 billion in cash.

這種話或許令人大打哈欠，但卻富有感染力。Facebook目前近70％的收入來自移動設備端，而就在短短几年前，移動端收入幾乎爲零。相較於其高速增長，Facebook臺式電腦端廣告營收的增速僅1%，不由得令人震驚。值得一提的是，就在不久前，Facebook幾乎全部收入都來自電腦端廣告。Facebook當前資產負債表上的現金規模幾乎可媲美其2014全年營收：截至2014年底，該公司坐擁112億美元現金。

But wait, wasn’t there something about a vision and making the world safe for something other than efficient mobile ad units?

等等，除了高效的移動廣告單元外，Facebook不是還有個要使世界變得更安全的願景嗎？

Indeed. Zuckerberg did something unique for an investor earnings call: He shared a three-, five-, and 10-year vision for his company. The three-year vision includes creating better services for people and, critically, businesses while growing Facebook’s “community.” The five-year plan envisions making businesses of WhatsApp and Messenger, an acquisition and a separate messaging app, respectively. The 10-year plan involves Zuckerberg’s goal of helping every person in the world obtain an Internet connection (through his project) and then plopping them down into a virtual-reality world stemming from Facebook’s Oculus VR purchase.

沒錯，扎克伯格做了件在投資者收益電話會議上極爲罕見的事：他分享了Facebook的三年、五年以及十年願景。其三年願景包括，爲人們以及（最重要的是）企業提供更好的服務，同時使Facebook的“社區”不斷髮展。五年計劃是使WhatsApp和Messenger兩款應用分別實現商業化。十年計劃則包括：使全球所有人都能連上互聯網（通過扎克伯格的項目），並使他們進入Facebook收購的Oculus VR創造的虛擬現實世界。

It’s the kind of stuff that only a company that’s printing money from its gigantic audience can afford to think about.

這樣的願景，只有擁有海量用戶、日進斗金的公司纔敢有。

Toward the end of the earnings call an investor asked Zuckerberg if it made sense to spending so much money to provide Internet connections to customers who wouldn’t generate sufficient revenue for Facebook to recoup the investment. Why, the analyst asked, does this matter to investors? Zuckerberg’s response neatly summed up his thinking about Facebook. “It matters to the kind of investors that we want to have because we’re a mission-focused company,” Zuckerberg said. “Part of the sub-text of your question is that if we were only focused on making money we’d simply focus on selling more ads in the U.S. But that’s not the only thing we think about here.”

收益電話會議接近尾聲時，有一位投資者問扎克伯格，斥巨資幫助那些不能給Facebook帶來足夠收入的客戶接入互聯網，以至於收不回本，這樣做是否合理？該分析師問道，這同投資者有什麼關係？扎克伯格的回答，很好地概括了他對Facebook的想法。他說道：“對於我們想要吸引的投資者來說，這一點很重要，因爲我們是一家專注於使命的企業。你提的問題的潛臺詞是，如果我們只關心賺錢，我們會專注於在美國賣出更多廣告。但我們並不僅關心賺錢。”

At Facebook FB 0.61% , they certainly think about making money. Indeed, when you make so much of it you also can think about creative ways to make even more, even if the payout is way off into the future.

不過，Facebook肯定有琢磨賺錢的事。確實，當你大賺特賺時，你可以想些有創意的方式來賺更多的錢，哪怕回報要很久以後才能看到。（財富中文網）