YouTube and Google’s parent company Alphabet’s recent earnings call revealed YouTube generated $5.04bn from ad revenue in a single quarter.

Between July and September, YouTube generated $5.04 billion in ads. This is up $1.2bn on the $3.80bn from Q3 2019.

With COVID-19 lockdown orders in place from March, many suspected Q2 2020 to bring in the biggest results, however the $3.81bn earned was only slightly up from $3.60bn generated in Q2 2019.

If YouTube generate another $5bn in Q4, they are on track for turning over more than $18 billion from ads in 2020.

YouTube Music ads
Image credit: MBW

No word on how much of the $5bn is being paid out to artists. Los Angeles-based analytics firm Pex recently reported stats showing music to be “more valuable” on YouTube in 2019 vs 2018. Pex calculated music makes up only 5% of all content uploaded to the platform, but accounted for 22% of all YouTube views last year. A 2% increase on 2018. Music videos were a staggering 83% of all videos exceeding one billion views on YouTube last year.

Elsewhere, YouTube Music now has over 30 million paying subscribers.