Alphabet (Google) raked in US$76 billion in annual net profit in 2021, nearly double 2020, after a particularly successful holiday season for the online advertising giant that again far exceeded market expectations .
In the fourth quarter alone, the turnover of the American group reached 75.33 billion, of which it generated 20.64 billion in net profit, according to its press release published on Tuesday. Its title took nearly 7% during electronic trading after the closing of the New York Stock Exchange.
“Our quarterly revenue, up 32% year-on-year, reflects strong ad spend across all formats and strong online consumer presence, as well as substantial revenue growth for Google Cloud,” the IT arm said. away from the company, said Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s chief financial officer.
The world leader in online advertising faltered slightly at the start of the pandemic, when some advertisers, such as tour operators, put their campaigns and promotions on hold. But the series of confinements and the digital habits adopted for almost two years have finally greatly benefited Google as well as other technology companies, from Apple to Meta (Facebook) via Amazon and Microsoft.
Teleworking and online commerce, in particular, allow the search engine and YouTube to attract more and more brands concerned with tracking the consumer.
In all, Google earned more than $61 billion in ad revenue, mostly from online search and its video platform. “For the first three quarters of 2021, Google delivered better-than-expected advertising results. (…) This pulled the whole market up and led us to revise our forecasts upwards, “said Paul Verna, analyst at eMarketer.
The firm predicts that this growth will continue in 2022: digital advertising should bring more than 171 billion dollars to Google this year, or 30% of the global cake, just ahead of Facebook (23.7% market share).
This leading duo and their advertising targeting methods have been the subject of various investigations, complaints and fines for years. In Europe and the United States, the pace of lawsuits has accelerated, without slowing down the growth of Silicon Valley.