• Yes, YouTube is profitable for Google. In 2022, YouTube generated an estimated $29.2 billion in revenue, and its parent company, Alphabet, reported that YouTube contributed roughly 10% to all Google revenue. YouTube’s primary revenue streams are advertising and subscription services. In 2022, advertising accounted for about 85% of YouTube’s revenue, while subscription services accounted for about 15%.

      YouTube’s advertising revenue comes from a variety of sources, including:

      • Display ads: These are static or animated ads that appear before, during, or after videos.
      • Video ads: These are longer ads that play before, during, or after videos.
      • TrueView ads: These are skippable ads that appear before videos.
      • Bumper ads: These are 6-second unskippable ads that appear before videos.
      • Sponsored videos: These are videos that are created by advertisers and promoted on YouTube.

      YouTube’s subscription services include:

      • YouTube Premium: This service offers ad-free viewing, background playback, and access to YouTube Originals.
      • YouTube Music Premium: This service offers ad-free music listening, background playback, and access to YouTube Music Originals.

      YouTube’s profitability is due to a number of factors, including:

      • Its large user base: YouTube has over 2 billion active users per month.
      • Its high engagement: YouTube users watch an average of 1 hour and 15 minutes of video per day.
      • Its targeted advertising: YouTube’s advertising platform allows advertisers to target their ads to specific demographics and interests.

      While YouTube is profitable, it is not as profitable as some other online platforms. For example, Facebook’s advertising revenue is about 98% of its total revenue. This is because YouTube shares a portion of its advertising revenue with content creators. However, YouTube’s profitability is still significant, and it is a major source of revenue for Google.

    • Its current operating profit is estimated to be about 3-18% of the total revenue after removing costs, which while something wont last long when you have a finite number of people to show ads and get subs from but an infinite amount of data to store and transmit worldwide.