YouTube doubles its ad revenue in the last two years

Google and its parent company Alphabet in recent years have been making a ton of money. Alphabet just dropped its latest earnings release and its revenue of $46.1 billion for the quarter was up 18 percent year-over-year, which points out to the fact that the company is making more money than ever.

For the first time ever, Alphabet broke out its YouTube advertising revenues, indicating how important the video site is to the company.

In 2019, YouTube ad revenues were $15.15 billion, which represents 86 percent growth since 2017. By contrast, the main Google search business grew by 40 percent to $98.1 billion over the last two years. Of course, Google's search business is even more mature than YouTube, and 40 percent growth is still quite impressive. But the importance of YouTube to the Alphabet business can't be overstated.

Sundar Pichai in fact has highlighted the growth of YouTube advertising on nearly every earnings call we've listened to in recent years.

Alphabet's "other revenue" category is another one investors are always interested in. This quarter, its other revenues totalled $5.3 billion, up 10 percent over the previous year, something that could suggest the Pixel 4 launch was a little more successful than the Pixel 3 launch in 2018. But this category also includes things like the Play Store and "YouTube non-advertising revenues".

Regardless, the "other revenue" category has grown 56 percent over the last two years. So like YouTube, it's outperforming Google's core search ad business.