Background: YouTube is owned by Alphabet, which also owns Google, Google Cloud, Android, Fitbit, Gemini, Waymo and much much more. It was acquired by Google back in 2006 for just $1.65 billion USD.

What happened: Now, YouTube is making nearly 8x that amount in ad revenue EACH YEAR. In fact, its ad revenue jumped to $9.8 billion USD in the past year - which was up 13%. What's even scarier is that YouTube isn’t just an online video streaming platform anymore - its considered more of a fully-fledged TV network because of its ability to be on your Connected TV.

What else: YouTube now accounts for 12.8% of all TV viewership, even ahead of Netflix, the highest share any platform has ever hit. This is just another reminder of how Connected TV has crushed the old-school TV networks… and will probably continue to do so. RIP Channel 10.

What's the key learning?

💡Connected TV (CTV) is the new battleground for advertisers and YouTube has already won the first few rounds. Unlike traditional TV ads, which are often hard to measure, CTV ads are delivered via internet-connected TVs.

💡With CTV, YouTube can target their audience a whole lot better than free-to-air, legacy TV. They know what you watched, when you watched it and where you watched it. On top of this, they can track data on the performance of the ads as well.

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💡YouTube claims that CTV ads on its platform drove over 1 billion conversions in the past 12 months. So, YouTube isn’t just an online video platform anymore, it’s a TV network, a search engine, a music service and an adtech beast all in one.