• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, February 2, 2022

Google’s total ad revenue surged 33% to $61.2 billion in 2021’s fourth quarter, exceeding analysts’ consensus forecast by 4%.

Search advertising leapt 35% to hit $43 billion, and Google’s YouTube gained 25%, to reach $8.6 billion.

Retail led the ad gains, with the media, travel and finance categories also seeing large increases, the company reported on Tuesday.

YouTube’s quarterly ad dollar gain surpassed Netflix’s $7.7 billion in subscription revenue in the quarter, although Netflix’s full-year revenue of $29.8 billion still outstripped YouTube’s $28.85 billion.

Still, YouTube’s growth (the numbers don’t include YouTube TV, YouTube Music or YouTube Premium) fell slightly short of analysts’ consensus expectation of an $8.7 billion gain.

Now up against the formidable growth of TikTok, Google’s daily active user base remained at 15 billion at year’s end, unchanged since last July.

Google’s continued leadership in capturing digital advertising spend, which rebounded last year from 2020’s pandemic cutbacks, drove a total revenue gain of 32% for parent company Alphabet, to $75.33 billion, versus a consensus expectation of $72.17 billion.

Thanks to its ability to collect its own data through search and YouTube, Google has been less impacted by Apple’s iOS privacy changes than other tech giants, including Meta, Twitter and Snapchat.

Alphabet’s cloud business saw revenue growth of 45% in Q4, to $5.54 billion. The unit’s $890 million loss was up from Q3’s $644 million, but down from $1.14 billion in Q4 2020.

Alphabet and Google CFO Ruth Porat  said the company intends to continue to invest “aggressively” in the cloud business.

Alphabet’s Q4 earnings per share of $30.69 — up from $22.30 in the year-ago quarter — also beat analysts’ expectation of $27.34.

For the full year, Alphabet saw its strongest revenue growth since 2007 — 41% — taking its annual revenue over $200 billion for the first time (to $257 billion). Year-end operating margins exceeded 30% for the first time since 2012, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The results — and an announcement of a 20-for-1 stock split to take effect in July — sent Alphabet stocks up 9% in extended trading after the earnings report.

That put the company’s shares, which had dropped 6.6% during an overall selloff of tech stocks, in the positive column year to date.

Alphabet’s shares spiked 65% last year, and are now up 40% from 12 months ago.

Alphabet’s “deep investment” in artificial intelligence across its key products drove the continued growth in its advertising and cloud businesses, and a quarterly sales record for Pixel phones despite supply constraints, CEO Sundar Pichai stated in the company’s earnings release.

The outstanding 2021 results could be tough to beat this year, particularly if the U.S. passes legislation preventing Google from giving its own products and services an advantage in search results.