Is Amazon to Blame for YouTube’s Ad Slowdown?

Google kicked off big tech’s portion of the summer earnings season with what seemed a middle-of-the-road report. Artificial intelligence appeared to give Google Cloud a bit of a lift, while search delivered another decent quarter. The outlier, surprisingly, was YouTube, for which ad growth slowed meaningfully.

That raises the question of whether Amazon’s push into TV advertising on Prime Video might be taking some of the wind out of YouTube’s sails. After all, this should be YouTube’s moment. The service routinely ranks as the leader in TV viewing time among streaming services. It’s so powerful that Netflix intimated last week it wasn’t even bothering to compete with YouTube but was aiming to take share from everyone else.