YouTube’s Ad Revenue Surges 14% in Q4, Boosted by U.S. Election Spending
By Movieguide® Contributor
Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, had a bleak Q4 report…except for YouTube’s ad growth.
On Dec. 31, Alphabet reported YouTube ad revenue jumped to 14% at $10.473 billion, going beyond what analysts predicted. The prior year’s revenue was $9.2 billion.
“YouTube advertising revenues was driven by strong spend on US election advertising with combined spend from both parties almost doubling from what we saw in the 2020 elections,” Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler told Wall Street analysts.
“Creators are now prioritizing high quality viewing experiences that truly shine on TV screens, inspiring even more viewers to tune in,” he continued. “In fact, the number of creators making majority of revenue from TV is up over 30% year on year.”
“We’ve also invested in podcasts where popular shows like Club Shay Shay and Lex Fridman are increasingly a visual format. YouTube creators and viewers are embracing this, in 2024 people watched over 400 million hours of podcasts each month on living room devices alone, YouTube is now the most popular service for podcasts listening in the U.S,” Schindler said.
The channel took 11% market share of TV viewership, which is a record for YouTube. If TikTok becomes banned, YouTube would only benefit more as users turn to its video Shorts feature.
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Alphabet had $96.5 billion in earnings per share of $2.15 — better than last quarter. However, investors didn’t like the low cloud revenue and speedy plan for heavy spending on AI tools. Cloud revenue sat at $12 billion and grew slower than in previous reports. In fact, it’s the slowest it’s grown since 2023.
After the report came out, shares dropped 6%. Now, they’ve grown by 8% in 2025.
As the Chinese AI chat app DeepSeek has become a major rival in the AI world, it’s only motivated CEO Sundar Pichai to pedal harder in the AI race.
“Our results show the power of our differentiated full-stack approach to AI innovation and the continued strength of our core businesses,” he said. “We are confident about the opportunities ahead, and to accelerate our progress, we expect to invest approximately $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025.”
Sorry, investors. It looks like that speedy spending isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.
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