In Alphabet’s April 25 quarterly earnings call, the company behind YouTube and Google announced that in its first quarter of 2024, it amassed $8.1 billion in ad revenue. And, according to Phillip Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, this comes down to the success of YouTube Shorts.
“In 2023, more people created content on YouTube than ever before,” Schindler said during the earnings call.
It was during this call that the figurehead also claimed that YouTube’s Partner Program paid out “more than any other creator monetization platform.” According to The Wrap, YouTube’s creator monetization platform has paid over $70 billion to creators this year.
YouTube Shorts sees ‘significant growth’ in earnings
In the earnings call, Alphabet’s CFO Ruth Porat noted that Shorts has seen “significant growth.” Year over year, the number of channels uploading YouTube Shorts has grown by 50%. And overall, the company also recently topped 3 million channels.
In the past year, the monetization rate of Shorts ads relative to “in-stream” ads in longer videos doubled. In the first quarter alone, there was a 10% improvement.
YouTube Shorts, Schindler added in the earnings call, is an effective “long-term bet” to help YouTube keep up with the demand for short-form video content created by TikTok.
“The way to think about it is advertisers really only spend with us when they see a positive [return on investment],” Schindler added. “So you can assume that this wouldn’t be happening unless it were to work for advertisers in the short term and also in the long term.”
