Google ads gain fuels profit for parent company Alphabet

A continued rebound in digital ad spending at Google drove its parent company’s profit up 68% in the third quarter.

Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc. said Tuesday that it earned $18.94 billion, or $27.99 per share, in the July-September period. Revenue rose 41% to $65.12 billion.

Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of $23.73 per share on revenue of $63.53 billion. Shares nonetheless slipped 1.7% to $2,740 in after-hours trading.

Google is the world’s dominant search engine, owns the biggest mobile operating system in Android and runs the behemoth video site YouTube. It holds 29% of the global $455 billion digital ads market, according to eMarketer, followed closely by Facebook. Both tech giants are benefiting as companies that scaled back on advertising last year during the pandemic pump more money into marketing.

The company’s dominance has drawn scrutiny for years, and regulators in the U.S. and other countries have gone after Google over different aspects of its business, including search, ads and its app store, to try to curtail its reach.

The advertising business, the core of the company, rose 43% to $53.13 billion. YouTube’s ads jumped 43%, to $7.21 billion, and the cloud-computing business climbed 45% to $4.99 billion.