YouTube Ad Sales Pop 20% in Q4, Topping Netflix Revenue for Quarter

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorYouTube’s advertising business kept burning rubber in the fourth quarter of 2021, delivering impressive growth and surpassing Netflix’s global revenue for the period.The internet video giant generated $8.63 billion in ad revenue for Q4, an increase of 20.3% year over year, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) reported.

Note that doesn’t include revenue from the more than 50 million YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers or YouTube TV.

Netflix posted $7.71 billion in Q4 revenue (up 16%).Overall, Alphabet handily beat Wall Street earnings estimates for the year-end quarter, pulling in $75.33 billion in revenue (up 25%) and posting net income of $20.64 billion, or $30.69 per share. Click here to sign up for Variety’s free Strictly Business newsletter covering earnings, financial news, and more.Wall Street analyst consensus estimates had pegged Alphabet Q4 2021 revenue at $72.13 billion and EPS of $27.32.In announcing earnings, Alphabet revealed that its board of directors approved a 20-for-1 stock split — in the form of a one-time special stock dividend on each share of the company’s stock.

Under the stock split, which is subject to stockholder approval, Alphabet stock owners will receive a dividend of 19 additional shares of the same class of stock they hold after the close of business on July 15, 2022.Last week, in an update to creators, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki boasted that the platform had delivered more than 5 trillion views of YouTube Shorts, the short-form video format popularized by TikTok, since first launching in September 2020.