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

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Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge
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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.

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…

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