It's a figure which, in his words, is "likely 50% greater than Yahoo!'s Display Advertising total and right-in-line with Netflix's total subscription revenue."

Google bought YouTube for $1.65bn in 2006 and, under Google's wing, YouTube has added more advertising, in an attempt to shift perceptions of the site as a platform for strictly individual videos towards being a site of TV-style channels.

Mahaney thinks that after distributing money to partners, Google's net revenues from YouTube will be $2.4bn this year.