Alphabet will record two consecutive financial quarters of advertising revenue decline as a result of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and future recession, according to forecasts from Pivotal Research.
Advertising revenue for the Google and YouTube parent company is expected to fall 8.9% in Q2 2020. This would be the first decline ever recorded and equal an absolute drop of $2.9bn from the previous year.
Advertising revenue will continue to struggle for the rest of 2020, dipping 2.1% in Q3 before recording single-digit growth of 3.2% in the usually lucrative fourth quarter.
This drop is likely to be...