More 18- to 49-year-olds in the US now “tune into” YouTube than any cable network, Google executives said in an earnings call with investors today (June 16).
The search giant’s online video platform saw a 60% rise in viewing time in the second quarter compared to a year prior. That’s “the fastest growth rate we’ve seen in two years,” chief financial officer Ruth Porat said.
In the second quarter, Google reported $3.93 billion in profit, a 17% jump from the year-ago period, on $17.73 billion of revenue. With better-than-expected earnings, shares soared—at one point, up 11% in after-hours trading. The company attributed YouTube as one of the key drivers of its growth.
The time spent watching YouTube videos on mobile doubled from a year ago. People on average spent 40 minutes per session watching videos on their phones and tablets.
Google does not break out the revenue of individual products, including YouTube. But the company touted programmatic buying of advertising on YouTube, which now has more than 1 billion viewers. YouTube’s ad format, TrueView, now allows advertisers to insert product information, pricing, and pictures into their commercials.
YouTube now has 40% more advertisers than it did a year ago, and the average spend for its top 100 advertisers is up 60%. With this growth, Porat said the next step for Google is “getting larger [ad] budgets moved to YouTube.”