Alphabet, Google’s parent company, released YouTube ad revenues for the first time in Q4 and 2019 full year earnings. Alphabet’s total 2019 revenues reached almost $162 billion. Breaking it down, Google advertising revenue accounted for $134.8 billion, with YouTube adding $15 billion to the pot for the year.
Q4 revenues were a bit lower than expected – $46.07 billion vs. $46.94 expected. Even then, earnings beat analyst expectations. Alphabet also announced that its Cloud business has a $10 billion run rate.
Google, Amazon and Facebook re the top three digital ad platforms. But, Google’s $134.8 billion in 2019 ad revenue is nearly 2X Facebook’s ad revenue of $69.7 billion. And Amazon’s 2019 ad revenue of $14.1 billion is less than YouTube’s $15 billion.
Here’s some context: YouTube is larger than these traditional media channels in the US – consumer magazines, newspapers, out-of-home, trade magazines, yellow pages and others. Just digital as a whole, traditional TV and radio are larger than YouTube. In Q4 alone, YouTube was able to bring in $4.7 billion.