Google isn’t shedding any light What YouTbe adds to the bottom line, but one analyst says that revenues for the video-sharing site may be massive. As AllThingsD has reported, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney pegs YouTube’s 2012 gross revenues at more than $3.6 billion per year. That figure is more than twice the amount Mahaney predicted in 2011.
The analysis is based on estimates of Google’s advertising revenues from YouTube. About $1.2 billion of the $3.6 billion figure would be distributed to Google’s partners, meaning that YouTube would bring in a net revenue of $2.4 billion. Mahaney had previously estimated that YouTube would bring in $1.7 billion in 2012.
Mahaney’s 2012 YouTube revenue estimate puts the site’s earnings 50 percent higher than Yahoo’s Display Advertising total and on par with Netflix’s total subscription revenue.
Google has been placing more ads with more videos, and they are being seen by more viewers. ComScore estimates that YouTube is seeing 20 percent quarter-after-quarter traffic growth, a massive figure given the site’s already high traffic stats.
