Google Not Immune to Crypto Winter

During a video conference call on Tuesday, Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, said a slowdown in ads revenue growth can be in part explained by reduced ad spending by cypto companies and other financial firms.

Google’s overall ad growth of 6% in the third quarter was the weakest for any period since 2013, other than one quarter at the beginning of the pandemic. YouTube ad revenue shrank from a year earlier.

In the third quarter, we did see a pullback in spend by some advertisers in certain areas in search. For example in financial services, we saw a pullback in the insurance, loan, mortgage, and crypto subcategories,

Schindler said.

Schindler mentioned the crypto winter twice during his speech, but he didn’t provide any additional information. The cryptocurrency industry has been battered in 2022, as investors have fled risky assets and sold out of digital coins and the related stocks that they bid up the prior couple years.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have both lost close to 60% of their value this year. Crypto exchange Coinbase, which went public in 2021, is down by over 70%. Meanwhile, the industry has been beset by bankruptcies as hedge funds and lenders, as Celsius Network, Voyager Digital and Three Arrows Capital were forced into bankruptcy.