YouTube’s star shines brighter as ad revenues jump to $15bn

The importance of YouTube to Google has been thrown into sharp relief after the tech giant published key metrics in its annual earnings report, confirming that the service pulled in $15bn in advertising revenue over 2019 and garnered 20 million paid subscribers.

These numbers equate to a 10% contribute a 10% share of total revenue, a sizeable 36.5% jump from the equivalent figure of $11.2bn generated in 2018.

Further progress was also made in convincing users to pay for favored access YouTube Premium and Music Premium generating a combined 20 million subscribers between them while the US-only YouTube TV clocked in with 2 million subscribers.

Elsewhere Google’s catch-all ‘other’ category, which includes the Pixel smartphone and Google Home speaker, generated $5.3bn of sales over the fourth quarter, as YouTube and Google Play helped mask a dip in hardware sales.

Over the piece, Google-parent Alphabet recorded revenues of $46bn over the fourth quarter, a rise of 17% year on year, although this still surprised on the downside of analyst expectations.

The financial success follows a series of public relations setbacks for the firm, culminating with a decision yesterday by YouTube to remove all political content which carries a ‘serious risk of egregious harm’ as it seeks to get a grip on the pernicious spread of fake news on its platform.