YouTube advertising revenue during the third quarter soared to $7.2 billion—up from about $5 billion one year ago—thanks in part to the service’s growing audience on connected TVs.
“YouTube's reach is becoming increasingly incremental to TV. We're helping advertisers find audiences they can't find anywhere else. Connected TV is driving part of this growth. It's our fastest-growing screen. The precision of digital paired with the scale of linear is proving to be an awesome combo and even more so now with the expansion of video action campaigns for CTV,” said Google CBO Philipp Schindler, according to a Motley Fool transcript.
Still, the 43% year over year growth rate marked a deceleration over the previous quarter, which also saw YouTube advertising top $7 billion. Google said the slight slowdown was driven by lapping a strong recovery in brand in the third quarter of last year.
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During Tuesday’s call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked about future growth for YouTube, which could see total revenues of about $30 billion this year.
“I think we have taken a long-term view, which is why you see the engagement on the product. It's working at scale,” he said. “I think we worked hard to make sure both creators can do well, and it's a great platform for advertisers. We have strengthened brand. We've built on it with robust momentum in direct response. There's obviously newer opportunities such as shopping, which we are investing in. And Shorts represents an additional early but important area for us from an investment and a growth standpoint.”
Google said that it recently surpassed 50 million music and premium subscribers including those in trial on YouTube, and that YouTube Shorts, in the past year, has seen the average number of daily first-time creators more than double.