On the Podcast: YouTube had a fantastic 2024, 2025 will be good, and 2026 is going to be great

FYI, Tubefilter has a podcast.

It’s hosted by our very own Joshua Cohen (that’s me) and Lauren Schnipper. Subscribe to Creator Upload on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

This week’s episode is sponsored by creator membership software Memberful.

Alphabet recently reported YouTube’s Q4 2024 advertising revenue topped out at $10.473 billion. It’s the first time the world’s largest video sharing site’s ad figures have hit eight figures in a single quarter. Political spending in an election year along with changing consumer behaviors – plus being in the market for 20 years now – all contributed to the number.  YouTube also hit its highest ever annual revenues of $36.147 billion. Let’s just bullet point all these revenues out since 2017 (which was the earliest year for which Alphabet broke out YouTube revenues into their own line item) so that we can all put that changing-consumer-behaviors and 20-years-in-the-market into perspective.

Here are the YouTube advertising revenues by year along with their annual percent increases. All dollar figures in billions:

• 2017: $8.15 billion
• 2018: $11.16 billion //+36.93%
• 2019: $15.15 billion // +35.75%
• 2020: $19.722 billion // +30.21%
• 2021: $28.845 billion // +46.24%
• 2022: $29.243 billion // +1.38%
• 2023: $31.510 billion // +7.75%
• 2024: $36.147 billion // +14.72%

In eight years, YouTube advertising revenues have increased 343.52%. If you want to break that down annually it comes out to +23.71% per year. Whether or not it can maintain that kind of growth moving forward is uncertain, but what’s perfectly clear is that number will continue to rise in 2025. I think it’s going to really take off in 2026. Here’s the rationale:

• 2024 – This was the year everyone with an advertising budget became familiar with the term “creator” and started asking questions like, “WTF are we doing with them?” Whether or not you previously invested in creators or platforms with creators on them, this once-newfangled kind of celebrity you could shrug off or pretend to not understand suddenly became a cultural staple almost two decades in the making. There are innumerable examples of how this manifested. Two of my favorites are CMO mecca Cannes Lion adopting a creator track
  (of which Tubefilter is an official media partner) and Kai Cenat inking a deal with Nike.
• 2025 – This will be the year when those brands without a creator strategy will implement one and those brands with a creator strategy will invest more into it. At the same time, all those brands will see they’re getting positive results from these strategies while the reach and cultural relevancy of marketing on traditional media outlets  will continue to decline (outside of live sports, which are playing a whole other ball game).
• 2026 – This is when things are really going to start to 🚀. In 2024 everyone found out about creators. In 2025 everyone either invested for the first time or invested more into creators. In 2026 they’re going to dramatically increase those investments due to positive results and the continued change in consumer behavior away from traditional entertainment outlets. All social platforms will benefit – and so will creators and those around them because of increased interest and output in aligning with creators via influencer marketing campaigns, products, and more – but the big overall winner is going to be YouTube as it continues its path towards living room, cultural, and entertainment industry domination.

What do you think? Pretty logical reasoning, right? Thank you, I know. I get into all this and more with my co-host Lauren Schnipper in the latest installment of Creator Upload. She agrees with me, too. Hear it for yourself on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whenever you listen. You’re gonna dig it.

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