Alphabet, Google’s parent company, just posted their latest quarter financial results and accompanying earnings call.

In Q2 2023, YouTube generated $7.66 billion in ad revenue. This figure is up 4.4% year-over-year and beat analysts’ expectations for advertisements on the video streaming platform, ending a three-quarter streak of declines. In fact, this is more than double what Spotify generated across its entire business in the same quarter.

While we don’t have figures for exactly how much YouTube Premium subscriptions brought in, ‘Google Other’ which includes YouTube TV, YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscriptions, brought in $8.14 billion in revenue, representing a huge 24.2% YoY jump. Unfortunately, Google hasn’t broken down these services, nor have they provided an update to the number of subscribers for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, which they said was 80 million on both services towards the end of last year.

Alphabet as a whole also saw good results, with $74.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 7.1% YoY, beating analysts’ expectations of $72.8 billion. Net income across the company was at $18.37 billion for the quarter, or $1.44 per share, a 14.8% YoY increase.

“YouTube advertising revenues of $7.7 billion, were up 4% driven by brand advertising, followed by direct response, reflecting further stabilization in spending by advertisers.”

“And in YouTube, we saw ongoing signs of stabilization in advertiser spending. We are prioritizing product focus on increasing quality consumption of video content with both Shorts and in the Living Room, which is translating into improved monetization.”

Ruth Porat, CFO Alphabet and Google

YouTube also shared that their short-form feature Shorts consumption had grown, with over 2 billion logged-in users watching at least one video every month, up from 1.5 billion last year. YouTube on the TV is also continuing to see growth.

“The Living Room remained our fastest growing screen in 2022 in terms of watchtime. We’re reaching more than 150 million people on Connected TV screens in the U.S., and seeing growth and momentum internationally.”

Sundar Pichai, CEO Alphabet and Google

Find the full earnings release here. Find the entire webcast transcript here.


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