YouTube Delivers $8.1B In Ad Revenue for Q1, Beating Wall Street Expectations

Even as linear TV continues to struggle, the video advertising market on YouTube continues to grow.

The Google-owned video platform on Thursday reported advertising revenue of $8.1 billion in Q1 2024, up more than 20% from $6.7 billion in the Q1 quarter a year ago. Wall Street estimates were for YouTube ad revenue of $7.7 billion.

Q1 is often a soft one for advertising, in Q4 (which is usually the best quarter for ads), YouTube had ad revenue of $9.2 billion. Both quarters were up by more than $1.2 billion from a year ago.

“Our results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from Search, YouTube and Cloud,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement. “We are well under way with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company. Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation.”

YouTube is growing at a double digit pace in a quarter when linear TV companies are reporting continued year-over-year declines in their ad revenue, a sign of the shifting dynamics of video advertising.

YouTube parent company Alphabet reported revenue of $80.5 billion, and net income of more than $23.6 billion. The bulk of that revenue is still from Google search.

Alphabet also initiated a dividend, giving shareholders $0.20 payable on June 17.

More to come.

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