Alphabet reports fourth quarter 2022 revenue up 1% year over year to $76 billion, net income down 34% year over year to $13.6 billion. 2022 closes with a turnover of 282.8 billion. Up 9.8% compared to 2021.
Google advertising revenue fell 4% year over year from $61.2 billion to $59 billion, below analyst estimates of $60.4 billion, and Google Search revenue fell 2%. on an annual basis to 42.6 billion. Despite cuts in late 2022, headcount grows 22% year-on-year to 190,234.
Against this backdrop, YouTube’s ad revenue fell 7.8% year over year, from $8.63 billion to $7.96 billion in the fourth quarter, below analyst estimates of 8.2 billions of dollars. Overall, YouTube’s advertising revenues are $29.2 billion. Up 1.4% over the previous year. A clear slowdown compared to the growth recorded in previous years. A slowdown due to a decline in advertising revenues in the second half of 2022 with the third quarter declining by 1.9% year-on-year, and by 7.7% in the fourth quarter.
Over the past couple of years, YouTube has been pushing hard Shorts, its short-form video feature designed to compete with TikTok. And, after testing in early 2022, YouTube started serving ads in Shorts in September, and now, since early 2023, YouTube Shorts is rolling out a revenue-sharing program for creators who meet certain criteria.
Commenting on the end-2022 results, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of Alphabet, said YouTube Shorts surpassed 50 billion daily views, up from 30 billion in April 2022. In fact, YouTube’s advertising revenue is suffering a severe blow in the wake of the economic slowdown and, above all, of the dominance of TikTok, while at the same time Amazon collects more and more advertising investments, effectively placing itself as the “third wheel” in the Google-Facebook duopoly.
