Instagram makes more money from ads than YouTube does, and it has for years

Instagram makes more money from ads than YouTube does, and it has for years

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

In a motion Meta filed on Friday to try and get the FTC’s monopoly claims dismissed, it includes details of how much advertising revenue Instagram brought in over the last few years.

At $32.4 billion for 2021 alone, that’s even more than YouTube, which pulled in $28.8 billion in the same year. Business Insider previously pointed out the lead it has over Google’s video unit, and mentions that YouTube gives up 55 percent of each advertising dollar it makes to content owners who upload videos while Instagram coughs up a lot less.

Image: Composite of filing from District Court, District of Columbia, and Alphabet 2021 Annual Report (PDF)

The gap is also there even if you look further back. In 2020 and 2019, Meta lists Instagram’s ad revenue as $22 and $17.9 billion, respectively, while YouTube’s ad revenue is listed in its annual report (PDF) as $19.7 and $15.1 billion for the same years.

According to Bloomberg, the figures show the share of Meta’s revenue that comes from Instagram has jumped from 26 percent in 2020 to almost 30 percent in the first six months of 2022. The figures from the filing give more insight than Meta’s quarterly earnings reports, which don’t break out Instagram, but now we have a much clearer idea about how much Adam Mosseri’s section means to Meta.