One of the most prominent signs that the advertising market had taken a turn for the worse in 2022 was when Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) reported its third-quarter 2022 results showing that YouTube ad revenue shrank 2% year over year, the first ad revenue decline for YouTube since the parent company started breaking out those results in the company's fourth-quarter 2019 earnings report. Management blamed its video platform's lackluster results on difficult comparisons to the previous year's robust revenue growth and a terrible economic environment.

Some shareholders also feared that competition from TikTok, a new social media platform for sharing short-form videos, was finally pressuring YouTube's ad revenue. The fact that data.ai -- formerly called App Annie -- globally ranked TikTok as No. 1 in user engagement, the top downloaded app, and the top app in consumer spending in 2021 also had not gone unnoticed.

Things weren't any better for YouTube when Alphabet reported its fourth-quarter 2022 results, showing the video platform's advertising revenue continued its downdraft with an 8% year-over-year decline. Worse, shortly after the earnings release, long-term YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, the person credited for Google acquiring the video platform in 2006, announced her retirement on Feb. 16.

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Source Fool.com