Any revenue figures for YouTube have always been a guess, a rough estimate, since Google has never revealed the actual figures for YouTube since they purchased the giant video platform in 2006.
The most recent guess has been made by eMarketer, who uncovered last week their first estimates for advertising revenues for YouTube.
It was estimated and predicted that YouTube’s ad revenues will have risen around 51.4% in 2013. This would roughly equate to 11.1% of Google’s total.
When compared to 2012, even after payments are made to the video creators and advertising partners, YouTube are still expected to be up 65.5%.
Image source: http://www.kunocreative.com/blog/bid/86775/Best-Practices-for-Leveraging-YouTube-in-B2B-Marketing
eMarketer has also taken a guess at YouTube’s US net ad revenues. They have predicted it will reach $1.08bn in 2013 with a large percentage stemming from video ads. For the year, the company has given YouTube an estimated 20.5% share of US video ad revenues.
Although this is not accurate information and indeed ‘guesswork’ eMarketer says the estimates are based off of hundreds of datapoints and studies of YouTube revenues as well as rates, ad impressions and other information gathered from different companies including investment banks, industry executives and research firms etc.
eMarketers analysis can be compared to other studies also conducted. Earlier this year, it was predicted by Morgan Stanley that the overall revenue of YouTube would reach $4bn in 2013. That same month, Barclays made a prediction with a similar result of $3.6bn.
“A June report by analyst firm Wedge Partners claimed YouTube accounts for around 10% of Google’s revenues – not far off eMarketer’s analysis – which if the company’s fourth quarter matched the average revenues across the three previous quarters would hint at around $5.73bn of YouTube revenues for 2013 as a whole.”- http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/11/youtube-ad-revenues-tipped-to-jump-51-to-56bn-in-2013
This is still all estimates and it isn’t likely that Google will be revealing anything any time soon. When Google first purchased YouTube in 2006, they paid a rather shocking $1.65bn, however looking at the revenue they are likely to be making, it was worth every penny.
Google’s public YouTube statistics have shown that the platform attracts around 1bn people a month, resulting in over 6bn hours of video being watched. Around 80% of its traffic originates from outside of the US with a further 40% of this viewing time be conducted through mobile devices.
Information source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/11/youtube-ad-revenues-tipped-to-jump-51-to-56bn-in-2013