Skip to main content

The time you lost watching YouTube ads last year netted Google $15 billion

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has revealed for the first time YouTube’s revenue from advertising, and it’s a cool $15 billion, according to Alphabet’s annual earnings report. That figure comprises just under 10 percent of Alphabet’s total revenue for 2019, .

In the report, Google disclosed that YouTube’s ad revenue grew from $3.6 billion in the last quarter of 2018 to $4.7 billion in the last quarter of 2019. It also nearly doubled from 2017 through 2019, moving from $8.1 billion in revenue in 2017, to $11.1 billion in 2018, and finally to $15.1 billion in 2019. Sundar Pinchai, Alphabet’s CEO, said he was “pleased” with the progress in the company’s “new growth areas,” which includes both YouTube and Cloud.

For context, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. That’s a huge return on investment.

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the new, huge number comes amid a few big advertising-related changes for the platform. In 2019, the site expanded its offerings of unskippable ads. In August 2018, YouTube announced that it would be “expanding” this option, which previously was only made available to eligible creators. As of 2019, the majority of YouTubers who could monetize their videos were also able to place unskippable ads in their videos.

YouTube at the time said this would allow creators to make more more money off of their videos, even if it meant a more frustrating experience for audiences. Previously, all YouTube ads allowed viewers to hit a “skip” button after the first 5 seconds of the ad. But the introduction of unskippable ads meant advertisers would be willing to pay much more for the ads. The unskippable ads range from 15 to 20 seconds long.

Early in January 2020, YouTube also announced it would limit advertisements on videos aimed at children, as part of a new policy to enhance data protections for young viewers after the Federal Trade Commission fined the site for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Washington Post reported. The site settled for $170 million with state and federal regulators, after prosecutors said YouTube had collected data on underage users, in violation of the act. It meant that YouTube would have to stop personalizing ads on videos aimed at children. In the meantime, the company reportedly raked in at least $50 million from just some of its YouTube children’s channels.

Maya Shwayder
I'm a multimedia journalist currently based in New England. I previously worked for DW News/Deutsche Welle as an anchor and…
YouTube hides dislike button count, drawing criticism from users and creators
Youtube video on mobile. Credits: YouTube official.

YouTube is currently the second-most-used platform in the world, and it has introduced a number of beneficial updates recently, such as offering translation options in the comments section of a YouTube video and introducing a "Media Literacy" campaign that empowers users to prevent misinformation. However, a recent update that hides the dislike button count has not gone down well with the creative community.

An announcement on the official YouTube blog has revealed the company would be making dislike counts private across its platform. While the creators will be able to see dislike counts, users will not. YouTube's justification for this is that it's seeking to reduce harassment of content creators, irrespective of their reach. YouTube revealed that it conducted an experiment earlier this year where the dislike button was available to viewers, but the dislike count was hidden. Because the count was hidden, it found that viewers or commenters were less likely to leave a dislike and engage in targeted harassment, which tends to occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.

Read more
YouTube TV now works in Safari on Mac
YouTube TV on Safari web browser on Mac.

One of the biggest live TV streaming services in the United States finally works on one of the three major browsers in the world. YouTube TV -- before today had been unavailable in Safari on MacOS — now works on Apple's default browser. (As spotted by 9to5 Google.)

Previously, going to tv.youtube.com would kick you to a support page on all the other ways to watch YouTube TV if you were trying to do so from Safari. There's no word on what changed in Safari (or MacOS) to allow YouTube TV to finally be supported, but we're also not going to look gift horse in the mouth.

Read more
The Roku-YouTube-YouTube TV impasse isn’t over yet
YouTube TV on Roku.

It's been several months since Roku and YouTube TV reached a cease-fire in their dispute over ... well, over a few things. But it now looks like the war is heating back up.

To recap, Roku in April 2021 first announced that negotiations that would extend YouTube TV's availability on the Roku platform had broken down. In doing so, it said that "Roku cannot accept Google’s unfair terms as we believe they could harm our users." Exactly what those disputed terms are has been a little ambiguous. Roku has said it has to do with search results. Google calls any allegations baseless.

Read more