Over a billion hours a day of YouTube were delivered daily to televisions in 2024. That is equivalent to 114,000 years of individual viewing. Alphabet reported that YouTube generated $36 billion dollars in advertising revenue in 2024, up from $32 billion the previous year.
If that sounds like a lot, Google search generated $198 billion in revenue over the year, up from $175 billion.
Together, Google generated $265 billion in advertising revenue over the year, up from $238 billion.
Total annual revenues for Alphabet were $350 billion, up from $307 billion the previous year.
Philipp Schindler, the chief business officer of Alphabet, told analysts that YouTube is making multi-year investments to tap into shifting consumer behaviour. He said that creators are now prioritizing high-quality viewing experiences that truly shine on television screens.
“Creators are at the centre of YouTube’s success,” he said. There are more than three million channels in the YouTube partner program.
The company is also investing in podcasts, increasingly in a visual format. In 2024, people watched over 400 million hours of podcasts each month on living room devices. YouTube is now the most popular service for listing to podcasts in the United States.
Alphabet expects to invest around $75 billion in capital expenditure in 2025, primarily related to artificial intelligence. While Google has invested heavily in artificial intelligence, it also represents a real threat to its search advertising model.
The global advertising market is worth about a trillion dollars. While huge, YouTube revenue is still a long way off the traditional television advertising market, which is worth over $160 billion a year.
However, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is expected to pass that figure in advertising revenue in 2025.