• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, October 26, 2022

During its earnings call on Tuesday, Alphabet reported YouTube revenue of $7.07 billion for the third quarter — down 2% versus Q3 2021, and below analysts’ expectation of $7.42 billion. 

That also marked YouTube’s first year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue since Google began breaking out YouTube’s results in 2019. 

Alphabet's total revenue growth dropped to 6%, versus 41% in the year-ago quarter, primarily reflecting “further pullbacks in advertiser spends” driven by fear of a coming recession, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said in the earnings call.

(The Google search and cloud businesses saw healthy growth in the period, however.)

Advertising cutbacks were seen in the financial services, mortgages and crypto categories, among others. 

Alphabet is far from alone. 

Snap’s ad revenue growth slowdown and warning of likely no growth in the fourth quarter sent its stock down nearly 30% last week, and Microsoft saw its growth fall to 16% in Q3, compared to 40% in Q3 2021. 

And later today, Meta is expected to report a second consecutive quarter of declining ad revenue in its earnings call.