May 12, 2022

YouTube‘s parent company Alphabet recently published its financial results for Q1 2022 (ended March 31), including revenues generated by the video platform’s ads business.

YouTube’s advertising revenues reached $6.87 billion in Q1 2022, up 14% versus the same quarter in 2021.

Alphabet generated total revenues of $68 billion in Q1 2022, up 23%, or up 26% in constant currency.

YouTube generated $6.005 billion in Q1 2021, up 49% YoY, which means that YouTube’s latest ad revenue growth slowed significantly year-on-year.

Average estimates by analysts forecast the platform’s ads business to grow at roughly 25% YoY in Q1 to around $7.4 billion.

In spite of missing analyst’s expectations for its Q1 revenue haul, when compared to other recently published financial results by prominent streaming services, the value of YouTube’s ads business in Q1 is something to behold.

Last month (April 27), Spotify revealed in its Q1 results that it generated revenue of €2.661 billion ($2.98bn) across its entire business during the quarter (Premium subscriber revenues and ad revenues included), which was up 19% year-on-year on a constant currency basis.

Obviously enough, at $6.87 billion, YouTube generated more than double from advertising than what Spotify – which now has 182 million global subscribers – made across its entire business in Q1.