Google ads gain fuels profit for parent company Alphabet

A continued rebound in digital ad spending at Google drove its parent company’s profit up 68 per cent in the third quarter. Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc said Tuesday that it earned USD 18.94 billion, or USD 27.99 per share, in the July-September period. Revenue rose 41 per cent to USD 65.12 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of USD 23.73 per share on revenue of USD 63.53 billion. Shares nonetheless slipped 1.7 per cent to USD 2,740 in after-hours trading.

Google is the world’s dominant search engine, owns the biggest mobile operating system in Android and runs the behemoth video site YouTube. It holds 29 per cent of the global USD 455 billion digital ads market, according to eMarketer, followed closely by Facebook. Both tech giants are benefiting as companies that scaled back on advertising last year during the pandemic pump more money into marketing. The company’s dominance has drawn scrutiny for years, and regulators in the US and other countries have gone after Google over different aspects of its business, including search, ads and its app store, to try to curtail its reach.

The advertising business, the core of the company, rose 43 per cent to USD 53.13 billion. YouTube’s ads jumped 43 per cent, to USD 7.21 billion, and the cloud-computing business climbed 45 per cent to USD 4.99 billion.