[aaronwall]

Google takes 45% revshare on YouTube. Some videos that were demonetized still show ads, so on those Google is taking 100%.

I've seen mid-roll ads on songs on YouTube.

Hosting costs & delivery costs (per byte) drop every year. Every year their compression gets better. Every year their ad revenues goes up. YouTube ad revenues have been growing at something like 30% a year for many years.

I think one reason Google doesn't break out YouTube profitability is because as soon as they show they are profitable they end up getting some of their biggest partners (like music labels) using those profits to readjust revshares.

Also if Google claims YouTube is not profitable they can be painted as the victim for extremist content or hate content they host, whereas if they show they were making a couple billion year a year in profits these narratives would be significantly less effective.

Core search ad prices haven't really been falling yet Google blended click prices keep falling about 20% a year while ad click volume is growing about 60% a year. This is driven primarily by increasing watch time on YouTube and increasing ad load on YouTube. Google blends video ad views in with their "clicks" count.