Stronger spending from Asia-Pacific-based retailers boosted ad revenue on YouTube to $8.1 billion during the first quarter of 2024, up 20% year-over-year, the company revealed during parent company Alphabet’s earnings call.
During the first quarter of 2023, Alphabet reported YouTube ad revenue of $6.7 billion. The latest figure exceeded by 5% consensus estimates from Wall Street analysts that ad revenue for the division would total $7.7 billion.
The stronger spending from APAC retailers continued a trend that began in the second quarter of 2023.
YouTube creation has also seen a lift. “In 2023, more people created content on YouTube than ever before,” Phillip Schindler, chief business officer for Google, said on Alphabet’s earnings call.
Additionally, its YouTube Partner Program has paid out “more than any other creator monetization platform,” Schindler said. In the past three years, the creator monetization platform has paid over $70 billion to creators, artists and media companies.
YouTube Shorts has seen significant growth as of late. The number of channels uploading YouTube Shorts grew 50% year over year, and the company recently topped 3 million channels. Over the last 12 months in the United States, the monetization rate of Shorts relative to in-stream viewing doubled, including a 10% sequential improvement in the first quarter alone. The offering is now also ad-supported on its mobile, table, living room and desktop versions.
Schindler noted that Shorts have served as a “long-term bet” to help YouTube respond to creator and viewer demand for short-form video.
“The way to think about it is advertisers really only spend with us when they see a positive ROI,” Schindler said. “So you can assume that this wouldn’t be happening unless it were to work for advertisers in the short term and also in the long term.”
On the subscription front, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said that “significant growth” in subscriptions is continuing to drive the “majority of revenue growth in this line.” But the company did see a decline in subscription revenue growth during the first quarter of 2024 compared to the last quarter of 2023. This shift reflects that YouTube only had one week of its NFL Sunday Ticket subscription this quarter compared to 14 weeks last quarter.
Speaking of its sports offerings, the company emphasized that it will continue to invest in partnerships with “the most popular sports league here in the U.S. and around the globe.” At present, YouTube did not have any news to share about expanding its live sports initiatives.
