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Youtube Businesses

YouTube Ad Revenue Tops $8.6 Billion, Beating Netflix In the Quarter (hollywoodreporter.com) 34

YouTube topped Netflix in terms of quarterly revenue, with the Google-owned video platform delivering $8.6 billion in advertising revenue in Q4, the company said Tuesday. The Hollywood Reporter reports: For fiscal 2021, YouTube delivered $28.8 billion in advertising revenue. In the same quarter a year earlier, YouTube delivered $6.9 billion in advertising revenue, underscoring the continued explosive growth of the platform. For comparison, Netflix delivered $7.7 billion in revenue in Q4 in 2021, compared to $6.6 billion a year earlier. Overall, Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported $75.3 billion in revenue for the quarter, and $257.6 billion for the year, with Google search advertising still making up the lions share of revenue.

With regard to YouTube, the executives cited commerce as a potential growth area for YouTube, with CEO Sundar Pichai calling it "a whole other layer of opportunity." "Podcasts, gaming, learning, sports, across all of these areas we will take a vertical specific look and find out how we can support creators better," he said. "While pretty early, there is a lot of pilots under way," he added, noting that they were "super early" into testing how shopping could be baked into YouTube Shorts, its TikTok-esque shorts platform, which Pichai said now has more than 5 trillion views. The executives also called out YouTube's connected TV opportunity.

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YouTube Ad Revenue Tops $8.6 Billion, Beating Netflix In the Quarter

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  • by darkpixel2k ( 623900 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @09:33PM (#62229027)

    YouTube delivered $28.8 billion in advertising revenue

    That'll probably drop signficantly in Q2. A friend finally convinced me to install TikTok...and while there are "native ads", you can skip right past them without being forced to watch for 30 second or occasionally 5 seconds and a skip button. They're probably stealing all my data and sending it to China, but what do I care? China has it already. Fuck the CCP.

    • How does TikTok compete with Youtube when their videos cap at about 3 min?
      • Every minute a person spends watching clips on TikTok is a minute they're not not spending watching longer-form videos on Youtube, and that has an impact on ad revenues. As ad-driven companies they're competing for "who can get people to spend more time on their platform" not "who offers the better video streaming service."
      • by khchung ( 462899 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @05:13AM (#62229655) Journal

        How does TikTok compete with Youtube when their videos cap at about 3 min?

        Perhaps because most YT videos are really 3 mins worth of content stretched out to 15-20 mins? And it benefits the viewers, the platform and the video creator to stream five 3-mins video vs one 15 mins video with the same amount of content?

        • My goodness are you ever right. There were some science oriented youtube channels that were pretty good a few years back, but with the need for time-stretches to enact ads they've started padding what could be one sentence announcements out to ten plus minutes of literal fluff and nothing before making the announcement. It's made me drop a lot of channels I used to follow pretty heavily.

        • How does TikTok compete with Youtube when their videos cap at about 3 min?

          Perhaps because most YT videos are really 3 mins worth of content stretched out to 15-20 mins? And it benefits the viewers, the platform and the video creator to stream five 3-mins video vs one 15 mins video with the same amount of content?

          "Let me start off by telling you something about what you just said. And I'll tell you right now. But first a word from our sponsor....<8 minutes and two unskippable ads later> ...so the thing I mentioned in the opening is what I'm going to say now...and it's that I think you're 100% correct."

          That's why I rarely watch YouTube anymore.

          • "Let me start off by telling you something about what you just said. And I'll tell you right now. But first a word from our sponsor....

            Linus, you forgot to drop something!

    • Uh? Ads in YouTube?
      I'm signed into Chrome and YouTube, running Ghostery and Adblock Plus (I think... so many "Ad Blocks" now) and about once a fortnight I have to endure 15-30 seconds of static images on a grey background before I can click on Skip Ad. Do that a few times, sorted, don't see them again for a fortnight or so.
      For those tracking my IP, etc, this PC I'm commenting with is NOT the HTPC. This gaming PC uses Firefox (with all the privacy options turned on) instead of Chrome, but same same, if I wat

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Using uBlock Origin there are never any ads on YouTube for me.

        There is also SponsorBlock, which automatically skips over parts of the video you don't want to watch, like sponsor sections, off-topic BS, intro animations, reminders to like and subscribe etc.

        For Android TV try Smart Tube Next, which has ad blocking and SponsorBlock built in.

        • Using uBlock Origin there are never any ads on YouTube for me.

          There is also SponsorBlock, which automatically skips over parts of the video you don't want to watch, like sponsor sections, off-topic BS, intro animations, reminders to like and subscribe etc.

          For Android TV try Smart Tube Next, which has ad blocking and SponsorBlock built in.

          Huh...that's handy.
          Unfortunately there's not much left on YouTube that's interesting. The algorithm has been showing me old videos I've already watched for years now.
          Like Hollywood, I think they're out of content.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The key is to subscribe to channels you like to keep the new content coming. With poor recommendations, you can click on the 3 dots (or long press the remote) and tell it not to recommend videos like that. Then it offers you the chance to say why you don't want those kinds of recommendations, and one of the options is "I've already watched this video".

            Doing that a few dozen times seems to give it the right message, but it only appears to recalculate your recommendations once per session or once per day, so

            • The key is to subscribe to channels you like to keep the new content coming. With poor recommendations, you can click on the 3 dots (or long press the remote) and tell it not to recommend videos like that. Then it offers you the chance to say why you don't want those kinds of recommendations, and one of the options is "I've already watched this video".

              Doing that a few dozen times seems to give it the right message, but it only appears to recalculate your recommendations once per session or once per day, so it takes a while to see the outcome.

              That doesn't work for me. I've hit "I've already watched this video" about 100 times over the last year to see how their algo reacts. It doesn't seem to do anything. It just keeps showing me the same crap I've already watched before. I'd estimate I'm subscribed to 75 channels that all release new content somewhat regularly. While I do see it, YouTube also shows a ton of stuff I've already watched. Not a problem, I've been working towards ditching all Google services for a few months now. Email and ca

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @07:08AM (#62229819)

        I'm signed into Chrome and YouTube, running Ghostery and Adblock Plus (I think... so many "Ad Blocks" now) and about once a fortnight I have to endure 15-30 seconds of static images on a grey background before I can click on Skip Ad. Do that a few times, sorted, don't see them again for a fortnight or so.

        Add in SponsorBlock too - it lets you get rid of those sponsor messages, intros and outros, "make sure you like and subscribe" and other such padding from videos as well.

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @10:33PM (#62229181)

    Yesterday for the nth time, Google rolled out a massive Youtube API change, for no reason other than to break third-party video players liike Newpipe [wikipedia.org] that are vastly superior to Google's own and - most importantly - remove intelligence-insulting, time wasting ads.

    Once again...

    Sigh...

    The advertisement revenue model really is the worst. It's like trying to play a game of cat and mouse with psychopath hell-bent on turning you into a brainless drooling consumer.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I thought I could run Youtube without an adblocker.
    After a day a scrambled to install one again.
    The amount of advertising between 3 minute songs is just staggering.

  • I was wondering why mine broke since last night. I had to use the newer youtube-dlers.

  • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @01:57AM (#62229439)
    It's way better without ads
  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @06:11AM (#62229745)

    Watching people making money with restoration of old screwdrivers is more relaxing than watching a soap with a dozen 28 year olds talking about their teen-angst.

  • There's a social compact aspect to viewing videos that most online services get completely wrong. Yes, you may present advertisements to me, but you must NEVER under any circumstances break my attention to the content I came here to see. Once I'm sucked into the story, you better not cut the nerve of my attention! Otherwise you've broken our agreement and I have no more reason to use you.

    In the old days of television, the content creators and the advertisers synchronized the placement of ads, so when there

    • by dddux ( 3656447 )

      Install uBlock Origin add-on and you'll be back to watching Youtube again in no time, my friend. ;) Cheers!

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