First, a disclaimer: I’m no expert, and I only know what is on these documents I linked. I haven’t read in-depth reporting by real investigative journalists, nor any reporting sourced or quoted from YT insiders (When I see articles about the ad-blocking, I knock wood that SmartTube is still working and keep scrolling, keen to avoid getting angry at another trillion-dollar company).
I’ve been doing some light research into Alphabet’s YT ad revenue numbers today on my lunch hour. Here is where you find that info.
My curiousity was piqued by a few posts here and elsewhere regarding YouTube’s new push to eliminate ad-blockers that indicate the push is because they’ve been losing money. Per my plebian understanding of these documents: Rather than a substantial decrease, YT had finally seen a ‘leveling off’ of ad revenue that had previously been enjoying explosive growth for the available history I can view. The historical (according to the data I have available to me) 32-43% increase in revenue leveling in 2022 to almost -2% is likely responsible for this push to more vigorously monetize users.
It’s not easy to relate to earnings when they have to be counted in “thousands of millions” of dollars, but if we reduce it all to simple percentages, I suppose we can agree at least that the data they are working from does show a drop in revenue. I suspect (as many do) that the loss in revenue growth in Q3 2022 could at least motivate them to look for ways to make more growth. Where we may find debate is on the concept that growth must continue into infinity.
#Notes
The links below are for Q3, so we’re comparing apples>apples. Earnings are provided in millions ($1,000 = $1B) My percentages after the link include ONLY YouTube Ad revenues, not the rest of YT revenues, which are liumped into “Google Other.” Revenue!=Profit, and YT expenses are hard (read:impossible) to discern from this simplified report.
Q3 2020, YT ad revenue up 32.42% from same period in 2019 ($3.80B to $5.03B).
Q3 2021, YT ad revenue up 43.04% from same period in 2020 ($5.03B to $7.20B).
Q3 2022, YT ad revenue down 1.86% from same period in 2021 ($7.20B to $7.07B).
Q3 2023, YT ad revenue up 12.45% from same period in 2022 ($7.07B to $7.95B).
I’ve enjoyed the discussion on this topic, with good points being made all over, like how we can’t lose sight of the value a non-ad-viewing user brings to YT simply by watching and increasing viewer counts, subscribing, donating super chat or otherwise, and linking/sharing videos elsewhere.
Lastly: My lunch break is over; I can’t respond to any comments for a while, so this is a post-and-run.
#YouTube #Google #EarningsReport #AdBlocker
EDIT: @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com if this doesn’t fit the sub please let me know or remove.
Maybe a different perspective could help?
YouTube advertising works a little differently to, say, Facebook. For advertisements longer than 30 seconds, the advertiser doesn’t pay if the user hits “Skip”. Ad-blocking users are far less likely to watch ads to completion, so I can imagine this having almost no impact on conversion.
I believe this change, if it is successful in blocking ad-blockers, will generally be detrimental to advertisers. It means advertisements shorter than 30 seconds (so, unskippable ads) are now shown to a larger proportion of people unlikely to be interested or paying attention to the advertisement. It’s beneficial to YouTube because they can claw back some of the money they spend serving ad-blocking users videos—that ain’t free. That being said, YouTube is still probably one of the most friendly big platforms to advertisers because of how flexible they are. While it uses the Google Ads system, it’s more friendly than Google search ads…
I missed an opportunity to ask someone who did a lot of YouTube advertising whether they noticed any impact at all from the recent ad-blocker blocking change recently, so this is all speculation.