YouTube ad revenue drops by 8%: Alphabet’s Q4 report

Alphabet today announced Q4 results for 2022, reporting an 8% drop in ad revenue for YouTube, despite generating a revenue of $76 billion, 1% more than the results from Q4 2021.

Despite YouTube’s growth in short-form video and subscription numbers, the platform has posted an ad revenue of $7.963 billion. The prior year the platform had generated an ad revenue of $8.633 billion.

Many tech giants such as Snap Inc. and Meta have already issued fairly weak ad results this week. Digital advertising, as the reports suggests, has seen a slump due to inflation and surging interest rates.

Alphabet announced last month that the company was laying off 12,000 workers. The tech giants have revealed in the report that the charges incurred by the decision were between $1.9 billion to $2.3 billion, most of which shall materialse in the first quarter.

Alphabet shares have dropped by 5% in after-hours trading, after seeing some recovery in January following an unfavourable 2022.