Google’s YouTube likely as profitable as Netflix
Google’s (GOOGL) YouTube business is probably at least as profitable as Netflix (NFLX), according to a report Monday from Generator Research. The report estimates YouTube generated about $5 billion in ad revenue in 2013, or 9% of Google’s total sales for the year. The popular online video site attracts more than 1 billion unique visitors each month, or half of all Internet users worldwide. YouTube’s revenue is rising because of three factors: growth in unique viewers, increase in the number of streaming ads served, and increase in the average cost of each ad, Generator analyst Andrew Sheehy said in a summary of the report. “When viewed on a P&L basis, we think that YouTube is a profitable business for Google: Not only does the company not have to pay content acquisition costs for the vast majority of its content, but our analysis is that the streaming costs are no…