YouTube sales soaring - but is it making money?

Ap
Wednesday 09 December 2009 11:45 GMT
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YouTube's chief executive says that ad sales are soaring, but gave no word on whether the popular video-sharing site is making money.

Chad Hurley, a YouTube co-founder, said the company had "two spectacular quarters" and that the site gets more than a billion views a day.

"Our cost continues to go down and our revenue continues to go up, it's a good combination for success, we are going to continue to build on that," Hurley said at a launching ceremony for a personal YouTube channel by Israeli President Shimon Peres.

"We've continued to grow in terms of traffic, we are well over a billion views a day on our site, we receive close to 24 hours of video every minute."

Peres said he wants to use the channel to hear ideas from people worldwide and communicate with them directly.

YouTube has been unprofitable since Google bought it for $1.76 billion (£1.07 billion) three years ago, but Google executives have indicated it is getting close to reaching the black.

The company does not disclose its revenue figures, but analysts estimated YouTube's revenue in 2008 at around $200 million (£122 million).

Although it attracts a massive audience worldwide, YouTube hasn't delivered a big pay-off for Google yet.

The 86-year-old Peres, an elder statesman of Israel's founding generation and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is known for tenaciously promoting coexistence and Mideast peace.

A welcome message on Peres' YouTube channel urges viewers to help him find solutions to three issues: advancing world peace, promoting religious tolerance and harnessing new technologies for the good of mankind.

"Let's take advantage of my channel to be informal, talk person to person and communicate like old acquaintances," Peres said at Tuesday's news conference.

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