Others · July 27, 2023

The ad market is recovering

Ads are the lifeblood of big tech. When the ad market slows toptechtrends.com/2022/07/28/the-advertising-slowdown-is-dinging-big-tech/”>as it did last year, companies like Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and even Microsoft suffer.

Tech’s biggest businesses have toptechtrends.com/2022/12/08/just-how-bad-is-the-q1-ad-market-going-to-be/”>endured a conservative advertising landscape in recent quarters as companies look to conserve cash against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and high interest rates. However, new data from a number of tech businesses indicates that the ad market is recovering, partly due to AI.


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Yesterday, we toptechtrends.com/2023/07/26/microsoft-alphabet-ai-results-analysis/”>saw how AI is beginning to help Alphabet and Microsoft. Today we’re studying Alphabet, Meta and Snap’s quarterly results, but instead of focusing on AI, we’re looking to see how their advertising incomes can help us understand the market.

We’ll start with search, move to social ads, and wrap with a reminder from Snap regarding how quickly advertising spend can shift, and its confidence for the near future.

A changing advertising market

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Here are the key numbers regarding advertising from Alphabet:

  • “Google Search & Other” reported revenue of $42.6 billion in Q2 2023, up from $40.7 billion a year ago.
  • YouTube advertising revenue rose to $7.7 billion from $7.3 billion.
  • Revenue from Google’s Network business dipped, but Alphabet’s advertising unit did well, reporting revenue of $58.1 billion from $56.3 billion a year earlier.

During the company’s earnings call, CFO Ruth Porat said:

Turning to our outlook for the business, with respect to Google Services, first, within Advertising, we were pleased with the acceleration of Search advertising revenue growth in the second quarter […] And in YouTube, we saw ongoing signs of stabilization in advertiser spending. We are prioritizing product focus on increasing quality consumption of video content with both Shorts and in the Living Room, which is translating into improved monetization.

That’s encouraging. Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, added a little more color:

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