[eMarketer] Google’s massive ad growth fueled by retail spending

Google boosted its ad revenues by 32.6% year over year to $61.24 billion in Q4 2021, per parent company Alphabet’s earnings release on Tuesday.

Full-year revenues for Alphabet rose by 41.2% to $257.64 billion—a rate of increase that Google hadn’t achieved since 2007, when it was much smaller.

Its search business led the charge with 35.7% growth in Q4, while YouTube ad revenues climbed 25.4%.

With the massive boom in online shopping over the pandemic, the retail industry’s importance in the digital ad market has rapidly increased. Retailers have always been the biggest spenders, but the sector is still expanding its share strongly.

The industry accounted for almost a quarter (24.9%) of all US digital ad spending in 2021, per our estimates.

According to eMarketer, retail grew its ad spend the second fastest of all industries we measure, by 34.5%, behind only entertainment. This year, retail ad spending growth will be the fastest, at 20.2%.

It’s also staking its claim in formats most important to Google. Retail’s share of search ad spending will grow by more than 5 percentage points between pre-pandemic 2019 and 2023, from 23.4% to 28.7%. The industry’s share of video ad spend will rise from 19.1% to 24.0% over the same period.

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