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YouTube's $60B revenue revealed amid paid subscriber push

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkrkd2xlx6o
35•1659447091•1h ago

Comments

bradgessler•23m ago
I remember thinking Google paid an absurd and ridiculous sum of money when they acquired YouTube. I couldn’t have been more wrong, what an incredible acquisition.
almosthere•16m ago
Yeah don't worry you were in a crowd of 99% of people that thought the same thing.
Brajeshwar•12m ago
I’m not sure how true it is but I remember reading the story where Google saw YouTube as the better choice because those guys are down the road, against their other competitors that they were trying to buy.
aurareturn•6m ago
Another acquisition, arguably even better, is Instagram. Most people got that wrong too.
saidinesh5•5m ago
Even WhatsApp.. that number was insane...
danpalmer•3m ago
I think that's an example of the opposite, the number was huge but how much revenue is being driven by WhatsApp? I think that would be a hard one to put a number on. I'm sure it's important for Meta overall, but it's not directly driving ad or subscription revenue.
CuriouslyC•5m ago
To be fair, goog has been investing heavily in youtube for ~20 years, and executing pretty well overall, it wasn't a foregone conclusion.
kibibu•4m ago
Yes, but how much of that success was driven by access to Google infra, adtech, and cash?
aamar•3m ago
Post-acquisition, Google employees made a number of smart moves with good execution, including a viable comp model for the creators and music rights deals. Several moves I consider bad as well, but the good moves outweigh them.

Looking back, I’m still pretty amazed they got so much of it right. Which is to say, a good chunk of the value wasn’t in the value of YouTube itself but in what Google brought to the table _or_ a synergy between the two.

Quarrel•1m ago
For a lot of the early years, it lost a lot of money. Providing the bandwidth, getting distribution closer to the ISPs etc was a major investment. Lots of dark fiber.

A bit like Google Maps though, a great visionary early investment that they then poured a lot of $ into to make them what they are today. No one else was just providing free satellite imagery for the entire world back then, not even Google Maps.

The investments to support these two products at least, have been really important in helping Google maintain its hold in other places too.

Lots of people still whinge about youtube, but standing up a solid competitor would take too many $ for anyone but other big tech now.

ekianjo•22m ago
Revenue is one thing, would be interested in learning the costs of operating YouTube at scale too.
stingraycharles•22m ago
> The figure, which totals the money generated through advertising on YouTube as well as paid subscriptions, far surpasses streaming rival Netflix's $45bn revenue.

I wonder if this is a fair comparison, though. It strikes me that Netflix’ revenue model is simpler and their costs are also lower, but I guess we won’t know YouTube’s costs any time soon.

dolphinscorpion•14m ago
Why would Netflix cost less to run when YT is mostly user generated content? Am I missing something? Both have to stream it
LiamPowell•10m ago
Netflix has a far smaller catalogue and can cache content in exchanges very close to the user, see [1]. Also YouTube pays their creators.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Connect

danpalmer•5m ago
Google has its Global Cache: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Global_Cache

One might imagine that the cache-ability is lower than Netflix, I can't comment on this, but GGC is very significant.

zommah•9m ago
Netflix is a production studio with an app, Youtube is a hosting service.

500 hours of video getting uploaded a min plus processing costs (including AI) for no upfront $$s. Far simpler CDN optimization

aaronblohowiak•8m ago
Fewer unique video hours, YouTube pays residuals, vastly smaller library to personalize
chii•13m ago
Youtube's content pipeline is free (for them - people willingly give the content to youtube!)

Netflix's content pipeline is hella expensive, due to their being boycotted by major content owners (like disney).

So i would imagine that youtube's revenue model is more efficient and thus generate a higher return than netflix's.

ls612•11m ago
YouTube pays something like 55% of its revenue to creators which is effectively its cost of content.
chii•3m ago
> which is effectively its cost of content.

only if that video generated sufficient revenue to pay out - which is quite a high bar. But the long tail of content is what draws people onto youtube as a platform - so youtube derive a benefit from this long tail content that they do not pay for.

However, the long tail for netflix won't have this advantage at all (because even niche shows with low audience will cost money to produce).

Not to mention that netflix has to pay upfront for their content. Where as youtube only pays _after_ the content has had ads displayed that generated revenue.

sowbug•12m ago
> and their costs are also lower

How so? Netflix has to license or produce all their content.

langarus•12m ago
> He said YouTube Premium - its service letting users pay to remove ads between videos, or songs on its music service - had helped boost paid subscriptions across Google consumer services to more than 325 million in 2025 overall.

Out of the 60bn they made only 325 ml from paid subscribers. The title made it like it was an important figure. There's also no YOY numbers or profit so it's difficult to draw a conclusion.

Buttons840•7m ago
325 million dollars or paying subscribers (each of whom pays more than a dollar)?
danpalmer•7m ago
It's 325 million subscriptions, not $325m.
firloop•4m ago
Yes, and also 325 million subscribers for all of Google, not just YouTube.
anxrn•3m ago
325M is the number of subscribers, not revenue. Revenue from paid subscriptions is estimated to be about $20B [1]

[1] https://outlierkit.com/resources/youtube-60-billion-revenue/

CHB0403085482•7m ago
Oct 30, 2024~ YouTube, the video platform Google acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006, has generated $50 billion in combined advertising and subscription revenue.

That's a lot of moolah!

j45•6m ago
This puts an interesting perspective on all the acquisitions Google has shuttered, they must not really stand out compared to the winners.
Briannaj•6m ago
I'd pay more if they let me turn off shorts.
gnarlouse•4m ago
> 'Not just cat videos anymore'

Still frankly one of the few redeeming aspects of YouTube. My feed is disastrous.

danpalmer•1m ago
At this number, YouTube would place 72nd on the Fortune 100 by revenue, and if extracted out of Alphabet, the rest would still be 11th place.

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