Google-owned YouTube announced its financial performance during the fourth quarter and reported $6.89 billion in revenue, spiking 36% from only a quarter before. The video giant’s sales were also up 46% compared to the same period a year before, when it posted $4.72 billion in Q4 sales. YouTube’s performance helped push Google to a record-setting quarter, with the tech giant revealing it made $56.9 billion during the last three months of 2020.
“Our strong fourth quarter performance was driven by Search and YouTube, as consumer and business activity recovered from earlier in the year. Google Cloud revenues were $13.1 billion for 2020, with significant ongoing momentum, and we remain focused on delivering value across the growth opportunities we see,” said Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Google's parent company, Alphabet.
As with many other AVOD and SVOD platforms, YouTube's good performance during this period is due, in large part, to the quarantine measures that were adopted in most countries in the world as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. With more time to be at home, many more people turned to these services.
Google did not provide an update on how YouTube TV, the company’s live TV streaming service, performed from a financial or subscriber perspective. The company also didn’t share stats on how much time YouTube users spend on the site each day — a metric some other services, like Roku, tend to share.