Digital technologies have opened new possibilities for firms to experiment with business models and deliberately change between them when new opportunities arise. We study a widely used platform-based business model in the software industry where consumers can use applications for free while being exposed to advertising that is charged for. Importantly, in this configuration the market structure is two-sided, where both positive direct network effects (i.e. social factors) and negative indirect network effects (i.e. nuisance due to ads) affect usage on the consumers’ side of the platform that then affects demand for ads. Changing from one-sided to two-sided market structure imposes a major systemic change in the business model that may significantly affect the performance of the focal firm. Based on the results from an agent-based simulation model, we find that especially when the initial business model with one-sided market structure is not optimized for performance, the change to the advertising busines...