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Youtube Advertising Businesses Google

YouTube Reveals Revenue For First Time: $15.1 Billion In 2019 73

For the first time, Google revealed that YouTube generated $15.1 billion in ad revenue in fiscal 2019, including $4.7 billion in the fourth quarter. The company disclosed the numbers in its quarterly earnings report, which also included fiscal 2019. From The Hollywood Reporter: Until now, Google and parent company Alphabet had folded YouTube's revenue in with Google. "To provide further insight into our business and the opportunities ahead, we're now disclosing our revenue on a more granular basis, including for Search, YouTube ads and Cloud," said Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat in a statement. Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts Monday on the company's quarterly earnings call that its YouTube TV streaming bundle now has more than two million subscribers, and that YouTube Music and YouTube Premium now have more than 20 million paid subscribers. The unit's subscription revenue now has a $3 billion annual run rate, Pichai said.

YouTube has seen enormous growth, according to the newly-released numbers. In fiscal 2017, YouTube generated $8.15 billion in ad revenue, followed by $11.15 billion fiscal 2018. In other words, YouTube's ad revenue has nearly doubled over the past two years. Google said that YouTube saw $3.6 billion in revenue in Q4 2018. The disclosure reveals just how big of a business YouTube is. The ad-supported video site, which was founded in 2005 and sold to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, has long been viewed as one of Google's crown jewels, with an enormous share of the ad-supported streaming video market. Netflix, for comparison, had $20.1 billion in revenue in fiscal 2019, almost entirely from subscriptions. Alphabet also broke out revenue from its Google Cloud unit for the first time, revealing that the division generated $8.9 billion in revenue last year. Overall, Alphabet hit $161.8 billion in revenue in fiscal 2019, including $46.1 billion in Q4.
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YouTube Reveals Revenue For First Time: $15.1 Billion In 2019

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  • by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @06:58PM (#59687014)
    I keep hearing about Youtube demonitizing anything to the right of Mao. I see just about every channel having a Patreon or something similar. I hear that the rules keep changing and not for content creators benefit. I wonder if the math works for a viable competitor. I'd love to see Youtube get some much needed competition.
    • by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @07:09PM (#59687050)

      ...I'd love to see Youtube get some much needed competition...

      YouTube does have competition: Metacafe, Break, Vimeo, Dailymotion and more.

      Trouble is that Google knows what marketing is. They bribed all those talk-show hosts to always be harping about YouTube. The masses then followed where the "action" was - YouTube.

      One problem I see is that what I refer to as competition is actually better described as inconsequential or anemic competition , and that's not Google's fault.

      • YouTube does have competition: Metacafe, Break, Vimeo, Dailymotion and more.

        Also xvideos, porntube, yiff something, others.

      • The "masses" and marketers are fucking idiots.

        The action is on World Star and TikTok.

      • Metacafe, Break, Vimeo, Dailymotion and more

        Have you tried Dailymotion for instance? Slow, page loaded with other stuff, user comments? quality (usually) lower. Youtube is successful for a reason, Google knows what they're doing technically, and that works well. Blame Google for a lot of reasons, but at least Youtube is fast, clean, has user comments and each and every time a video is available from a search, I'm glad it's on Youtube and not the competition.

    • They actually scrape the audio from the channels and an algorithm decodes the speech into transcripts which then look for key words that if said will demonetize the video. They recently testified in congress that a channel was demonetized for speaking about "killing" but the video was about the 10 commandments and they were talking about "Thou shalt not kill." The algorithms lose all context and have made kid friendly content king. Even the largest YouTubers are afraid to swear in their videos because it c
      • If the grocery store kicks people out for swearing, good riddance. If it happens in a bar, it was probably more than just swearing. For actual reasons.

        They should save it the fuck up for appropriate places.

        I don't really want people's edgy bullshit mixed in with educational videos, kpop, cats, and the other stuff that makes youtube what it is.

        Maybe youtube is too worldly for serious religious content anyways?

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Why does a professor giving a lecture need to be monetized on youtube?

            IMO that either means it is fucking irrelevant that he's a professor (of something) and it is sounding like bullshit, or else his teaching is already being excessively commercialized in a way that reduces trust in what he says.

            I watch professors on youtube all the time. Today I watched a video by Walter Lewin. Guess what? He doesn't talk about monetization. People talking about that are not acting as professors on youtube, they're doing s

            • Ehm... so professors are not professors if they want to earn some money? The fuck?

              • Indeed, if the professor is mowing my lawn, he's not working as a professor right now.

                If he is actually a professor, he earns money for it already. If he's getting extra payments on the side, he's not a trustworthy source of information.

                That has been true... forever. Creating a conflict of interest by accepting outside money makes people suspicious of his motives.

                And in this particular case, it incentivizes him to produce bullshit, because that will increase engagement, increase views. He shouldn't care abo

                • I'm sure there are situations where such a conflict of interest does occur, but lots of professors write books, consult or do other things to earn money outside of academia. I don't see why creating useful video content shouldn't be one of them.

                  • There isn't anything wrong with "creating useful video content," but there is a big difference that and what you have to do to make money on youtube off of the ads. You have to alter your content based on what people engage with, you have to use keywords, there is a lot to it that goes against their having an independent voice.

                    If they didn't monetize the video, and instead linked frequently to their book, there would be no conflict of interest. And their book is likely to be reviewed by their colleagues, an

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • My goodness, if you can't comprehend the point I was making, why do you keep replying?

                Entitled? No, he should absolutely not post his bullshit. What the fuck did you think I thought I was entitled to?

                Actual professors who are making videos about what they teach are already getting paid to teach it, if their institution lets them post their lecture, they didn't eat and costs. Youtube doesn't charge them to post it.

                Why the fuck would a professor be hiring models to make a lecture? Why not just film the lectur

          • They demonetized a documentary about work of a filming crew: "Shooting a 60-second commercial" due to the word "shooting".

    • by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @07:19PM (#59687088)

      I keep hearing about Youtube demonitizing anything to the right of Mao.

      For this to even look true, you'd have to be just a wee hair to the left of Hitler.

      Or to his right, in which case you'll claim he was a "socialist."

    • by DogDude ( 805747 )
      I'd love to see Youtube get some much needed competition.

      What would that be... an all right-wing video hosting website? I don't know many people who'd want to advertise on something like that.
      • What would help is a service where content creators wouldn’t have to live in fear of being demonetised. If enough of the big ticket channels would join up, there might be enough momentum to attract sufficient advertising to make the thing work for the service provider and content creators. If advertisers are afraid to be associated with certain content, the solution isn’t to remove all ads from videos with anything that might be questionable. Just demand that creators tag their videos with appro
        • by DogDude ( 805747 )
          Just demand that creators tag their videos with appropriate labels like “strong language”, “gaming”, “occasional nudity”, “kid friendly”, and then you olive the use of those keywords, and let advertisers choose where their ads appear.

          That just won't work, for obvious reasons.

          Yeah, online advertising is a real shitshow these days. Google and Facebook own it, and they don't do a great job even telling you exactly how many people you reach. It's all ve
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's not political, they demonetize anything remotely controversial including a lot of left leaning channels.

      And this shows why. They are making loads of money, it's not hurting them. If your company was making 15 billion dollars a year and someone told you it was a disaster and anti free speech and had a political bias and everyone is going to some tiny competitor who can't even afford its bandwidth costs you would laugh at them.

      Same with bogus copyright strikes and claims.

    • I keep hearing about Youtube demonitizing anything to the right of Mao.

      Youtube does not censor the right (anymore than they censor the left).

      If that's what you keep on hearing, perhaps you should change (or at the very least diversify) your news sources.

      They've pulled videos & demonetised anything controversial [medium.com]. Including such left wing videos as "Jordan Peterson Doesn’t Understand Nazism”, and then deleting the anti-nazism Channel that hosted it (Three Arrows) entirely.

      Want more examples? [theverge.com] Ford Fischer's Channel was demonitized entirely after reporting on "Unit

    • Yahoo could've given good competition to YouTube. They had the brand, they had the money, they were in the same space.

      The two verticals Yahoo should have focused was a version of Google News and YouTube. Simple portals with no blinking flashing ads would be a starting point.

      The problem was their management. A bunch of nincompoops.

      I was stupid enough to write to Marissa Mayer when she took charge of Yahoo. As expected did not hear back, neither they considered such ideas.
  • by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @07:05PM (#59687040)
    Imagine if YouTube hadn't demonetized 'edgy' content which forced YouTubers to go out and get their own marketing. Most if not all of the advertisements that YouTubers had to get on their own could have just been through YouTube's system and made YouTube half or so of the profits. Instead you get ads inserted by the YouTuber's themselves and tons of t-shirts and water bottles being sold by YouTubers that YouTube doesn't make money from.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Was it YouTube that demonetized those videos or the advertisers? YouTube would presumably be happy to take advertising money for them.

      Complain to the big brands that they don't advertise on your favourite channels.

  • And still they want money from me.

  • It doesn't matter they shafted creators - revenue is through the roof.

    So, in short, its never going back to the way it was.

    Get used to it or go elsewhere I suppose.

  • Who is doing what with all the ads to pay back so much for the ads?
    • by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Advertisements are used to sell things. That's why people advertise. That's why we advertise.
      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Who is looking and buying for that "ad" to detect a sale from the ad and pay?
        Thats a lot of trust in, clicks from, a sale and resulting payments from ads...
        • Wow. This looks very similar to, but is entirely distinct from, English.

          • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Guess not many people use ad blocking...
            Ads work on the wider computer using population...
            Vast numbers of people are clicking ads and spending ~$5 to ~$2000 on products and services...
  • To YouTube Corp, which automates censorship and centralizes profits: $15.1 Billion almost
    To the content creators who do all the work and make it possible: chump change

    • chump change at best, assuming your content isn't demonetized arbitrarily and without opportunity for recourse.

      and people are still lining up for the "opportunity". hahahahahaha.

  • That would be a travesty to Capitalism [telegraph.co.uk]
  • Did anybody see YouTube costs broken out? I see $6B in total corporate capex, but does that include all the YT hard drives or are those regular expenses?

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