YouTube Q4 Ad Sales Rise 15% As Parent Alphabet Sees AI Investment, Severance Payouts

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Google parent Alphabet reported decent numbers for the fourth quarter of 2023, including a 15.5% hike in YouTube  advertising to $9.2 billion (from $7.8 billion), solid but disappointing the market a bit with shares down 4%. Most numbers met but didn’t exceed expectations at a time of very high expectations for tech stocks.

Cloud services was strong, with revenue of $9.2 billion from $7.3 billion.

 “We are pleased with the ongoing strength in Search and the growing contribution from YouTube and Cloud. Each of these is already benefiting from our AI investments and innovation. As we enter the Gemini era, the best is yet to come,” said CEO Sundar Pichai, referring to the company’s new Gemini AI platform.

 CFO Ruth Porat said, “We ended 2023 with very strong fourth quarter financial results, with Q4 consolidated revenues of $86 billion, up 13% year over year. We remain committed to our work to durably re-engineer our cost base as we invest to support our growth opportunities.”

Investing in AI costs and the company has been conducting rounds of layoffs. A hit in Jan. resulted in employee severance and related charges of $2.1 billion for the year.

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