Driven by factors including a dominant infiltration into U.S. living rooms, as well as expansion into new content areas like podcasts, YouTube generated a record $10.473 billion in advertising sales in the fourth quarter, 13.8% YoY growth.
The performance during the October - December period represented the first time that YouTube surpassed $10 billion in ad sales in a quarter. That doesn’t include subscription revenue generated by platforms including YouTube Premium and virtual pay-TV service YouTube TV, which now reportedly has more than 9 million U.S. subscribers. (You can access YouTube parent company Alphabet’s Q4 earnings release and webcast here.)
YouTube’s been on a growth bender of late, with full-year ad sales reaching an all-time high of $36.2 billion in 2024.
Last fall, parent company Alphabet said revenue across YouTube’s various ad-supported and subscription platforms topped $50 billion for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30. It was the first time YouTube had reached that $50 billion benchmark. (As it usually doesn’t, Alphabet provided no official metrics for YouTube TV or YouTube Premium.)
YouTube surges
Originally known as a video platform for computers and mobile phones, the use of YouTube in American connected living rooms has surged in recent years. According to Nielsen figures, YouTube accounted for 11.1% of all TV viewing in the U.S. in December. During its Q4 earnings call on Tuesday, Alphabet said that on Nov. 5, 45 million Americans watched election-related content on the platform.
A lot of YouTube’s CTV watch time has been generated by podcasts, with 400 million hours of podcasts being consumed in American living rooms last year, according to Alphabet. YouTube is now the top platform in the U.S. for consuming podcasts, the company added.
Alphabet overall strength
Overall, across sectors including Google Cloud and the Waymo self-driving taxi service, just to name a few other operating units, revenue for Alphabet surged 12% YoY to nearly $96.5 billion, with the focus across the company’s product lines increasingly fixated on artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, on Tuesday, Alphabet disclosed plans to lay out $75 billion in capital expenditures targeted to the development of AI technology and products.
That AI fixation extends to YouTube — Alphabet executives are bullish on the potential of the soon-to-be-released Veo 2 video creation tool, which generates premium-quality short-form 4K video using AI. YouTube creators will have access to this potentially game-changing software later this year.
While YouTube revenue generation exceeded analysts’ consensus forecasts in Q4, overall revenue did not beat the expectations of The Street. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock was down more than 7% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.