Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and good evening. Thank you for joining Sohu's Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I'll now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference call, Huang Pu, Investor Relations Director of Sohu. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Thank you for joining us to discuss Sohu's Q1 2023 results. On the call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Charles Zhang, CFO, Joanna Lv, and Vice President of Finance, James Deng. Also with us are Changyou CEO Dewen Chen, and CFO, Yaobin Wang. Before management begins their prepared remarks, I would like to remind you of the company's safe harbor statement in connection with today's conference call. Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current plans, estimates and projections, and therefore you should not place undue reliance on them.
Forward-looking statements involving inherent risks and uncertainties. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause actual results differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recent annual report on Form 20-F. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dr. Charles Zhang. Charles, please proceed.
Thanks, Huang Pu. Thank you everyone for joining our call. In the Q1 of 2023, we hit the high end of our prior guidance for brand advertising revenue, while our bottom line performance came in well above expectations despite the impact of seasonality. At Sohu Media, we further improved operational efficiency and focused on enhancing user experience through product and algorithm refinements. We closely monitored market trends and provided innovative marketing solutions to our advertisers. At Sohu Video, we continue to develop both long-form and short-form original content under our Twin Engine strategy. Leveraging the advantages of our product mix metrics, we were able to consolidate our resources and proactively explore a diverse range of monetization opportunities. Online games remain stable during the quarter, with revenues in line with the prior guidance.
Now let me go into detail about each of our businesses. I'll go into our each of our business in a moment, but first, a quick overview of the overall financial performance. For the Q1 of 2023, total revenue, $162 million, down 16% year-over-year, up 1% quarter-over-quarter. Brand advertising revenue, $23 million, down 5% year-over-year, and 22% quarter-over-quarter. Online game revenues, $129 million, down 18% year-over-year and up 7% quarter-over-quarter. GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited was $80 million compared with a net income of $3 million in the net income of $3 million in the Q1 of 2022, and net loss of $7 million in the Q4 of 2022.
Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited was $13 million, compared with net income of $9 million in the Q1 of last year, and a net loss of $2 million in the Q4 of 2022. Now, I'll go through our key businesses in more detail. First, Sohu Media Portal and Sohu Video. At Sohu Media Portal, we harnessed the cutting-edge technology to steadily optimize our products and algorithms. As a mainstream media platform, we not only deliver reliable and real-time news and information to our users, but also stimulate high quality self-media content generating generation among users and expand our social network distribution. Through this effort, we have continuously improved the user experiences and further strengthened our brand influence. At Sohu Video, we focus on developing high quality long-form and short-form content.
For the long-form content in the Q1, we have rolled out Ye Cheng Fu, and The Sour Plum Sweet Love, Qing Mei Suan Suan Ni Wei Tian, both of which won acclaim from audiences. In April, we released a crime scene idol romance, Love of Replica, Wei Ni Ni Guang Er Lai, the upgraded sequel to 2021's Mysterious Love, Wei Ni, Ta Zai Ni Guang Zhong Gao Bai. The Love of Replica became a hit show again at the time of its release, actually last week, and further boosted our audience base. For reality shows, we saw the successful release of On Her Way Home special edition from the Spring Festival.
The On Her Way Home series has gained widespread attention and generated in-depth discussion of various social issues, helping its reach and penetrate larger audiences. In terms of short-form content, we continue to focus on the social, science-related live streamings, and supported by our advanced live streaming broadcasting technology. With abundant and professional reserve of broadcasters across numerous verticals such as, and the rich offering of high quality content, Sohu Video continues to consolidate its reputation as a leading science technology-based live broadcasting platform. On the monetization front, the overall market recovered moderately during the quarter. As advertising demand bounced back, we proactively explored various monetization opportunities in differentiated scenarios.
For example, during the quarter, we successfully hosted the annual Sohu Fashion Awards, Sohu and offline event, which has become a distinctive IP for Sohu, and demonstrates our position as a mainstream media platform. The Sohu Fashion Award, together with the Charles' Physics Class, my teaching physics, you know. The Talks Under the Starry Sky and the Talks by the Stone Well is, you know, interview program generated significant attention and created various hot topics and discussions on our product metrics, as well as across various social media platforms. These unique campaigns leveraging by our dual platform of Sohu Video and Sohu News, and reinforced our strong brand influence, and our good contents, and provided our advertisers with ample market exposures.
Next, turning to online game business. During the Q1 of 2023, online game revenues were in line with the company's prior guidance. Within our PC games business, we launched some Chinese New Year-themed holiday events and promotions for the regular TLBB PC. Continued to improve the functionality of TLBB Vintage based on players' needs, and also introduced a new cross-server PVP event that matches players randomly. In our mobile game businesses, we launched updates for Legacy TLBB Mobile to celebrate the Chinese New Year, introducing not only a series of holiday events, but also optimization of clan scales, skills. In the Q2 of 2023, we will launch expansion packs and content updates for TLBB PC, Legacy TLBB Mobile, and other games to keep players engaged.
As technology in the game business industry keeps advancing and market demand becomes deeper and more diversified, we intend to stick with our top game strategy, allocating more resources to professional talent development, as well as content and technology innovation in order to roll out more high-quality mobile games. In terms of the games pipeline, while maintaining our core competitiveness in MMORPGs, we also produce games in various types, including card-based RPGs, strategy, sports, and idle games. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Joanna, who will walk you through our financial results. Joanna?
Thank you, Charles. I will now walk you through the key financials of our major segments for the Q1 of 2023. All the numbers on the non-GAAP basis. You may find a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures on our IR website. For Sohu Media Portal, quarterly revenues were $80 million, compared with revenues $80 million in the same quarter last year. The quarterly operating loss was $35 million, compared with an operating loss of $45 million in the same quarter last year. For Sohu Video, quarterly revenues were $30 million, compared with revenues $50 million in the same quarter last year. Quarterly operating loss was $32 million, compared with an operating loss of $21 million in the same quarter last year.
For Changyou's online game business and the 17173.com, quarterly revenues, $131 million, compared with revenues $160 million in the same quarter last year. Quarterly operating profit was $55 million, compared with an operating profit of $85 million in the same quarter last year.
For the Q2 of 2023, we expect brand advertising revenues to be between $23 million and $26 million. This implies annual decrease of 8% to an annual increase of 4%, and a sequential increase of 2% to 15%. Online game revenues to be between $112 million and $122 million. This implies an annual decrease of 22%-29% and a sequential decrease of 6%-13%. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited to be between $15 million and $25 million. GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited to be between $80 million and $28 million. Our guidance reflects our current and preliminary view, which is subject to substantial uncertainty. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we would now like to open the call to questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. To cancel request, please press star one one. There'll be a short silence while questions are being collected. Thank you for your patience. One moment for the first question. Our first question comes from Thomas Chong of Jefferies. Please proceed.
Thanks management for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one is about advertising industry in 2023 outlook, and also, advertising spending budget among auto FMCG, internet service and property service advertisers. My second question is about online game outlook and our game pipelines in 2023. Thanks.
For 2023 advertising, we see the top three categories, the auto 25%, FMCG 15% and internet service 15%. We see some opportunities for auto industry probably in later of in Q2 or Q3 later this year. For Q1, it's because there's a new policy for the July 1st policy for a stricter emission standard. Some auto companies trying to, you know, lower the price and try to get rid of their stockpile, you know, stockpiles. There's some advertising on Q1 is kind of soft. It's just a negative impact on that.
For the, for the whole year, since there's some opportunities, there's more competition in the auto industry, especially for electrical, electric car, you know, new energies, you know, electric car industries. For FMCG, we see some, you know, the people are, has less money in spending on large item, larger item spending. For small items, since there's a kind of recovery. Because Q1 and this year is the first Q1 and first year after the COVID-19, basically, you know, after the lifting of the, you know, lockup or the lockdown or the zero COVID policy.
Everything in Q1 and Q2 will be very indicative of a normal economy, the economy should be, since is less, is bouncing back not as much as we expected. We do see some, I would say the, you know, the lipstick economy, lipstick economy effect, right? Because people have less money, so this not spending on large items. They're left with more. They're not buying real estate, they're not buying houses, they're not spending on, you know, large items. They have, that's why left, leave them with more, some cash to spend, more small spending. Including the, you know, spend some, pay some monthly subscription to pay for a video long form, you know, the video drama subscription.
This is what I see for the advertising this year. 还 有 我 们 的 Sea of Dawn 在 港 、 澳 、 台 、 韩 国 和 欧 美 预 计 第 三 季 度 也 会 在 这 些 海 外 地 区 发 行 。 从 今 年 的 游 戏 业 务 来 说 ， 我 们 希 望 还 是 稳 定 老 游 戏 的 这 个 ， 同 时 去 让 ， 想 让 新 的 游 戏 更 好 的 成 绩 吧 。
In terms of game pipeline, we will release new TLBB mobile in the Q3 this year. It has got the license approval in February. The other one is New Westward Journey mobile project. It is applying for the license, and we plan to launch it in the Chinese, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan regions in the Q3 this year. If we can get the license this year, we will release it in Chinese mainland, probably before a year and/or the Q1 next year. For the overseas market, we licensed a game, a Japanese manga game called Haikyu!!, and we'll release it in Korean, South Korean, and Japan in Q4 this year. Also self-developed the game Sea of Dawn.
We plan to launch it in South Korea and also American and Europe overseas market in the Q3 this year. For overall gaming business this year, our goal is to maintain the stability of our older games, and also it depends on the new game performance. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. As a reminder, to ask question, please press star one one. Next up, we have the lines from Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please proceed.
Hi. Good evening, Charles, Joanna and management team. Thanks for taking my questions. I do have follow-up on both the advertising and gaming. First of all, on advertising, Charles, I think you mentioned during the Q1, it was recovering moderately. You did also explain, you know, some of the big-ticket items, small-ticket items. What about in general in terms of the overall ad sentiment? For advertisers that are in the industry that is still, you know, kind of lacking, are they, you know, also preparing, maybe they wanted to spend more or they're actually still cautious on the spending? Do you expect second half, you know, some of these big-ticket item spending could be improving and hence will be driving the advertising growth?
This is the first question. Second question on the gaming is the Q2 guidance. It does look like the guidance was relatively weaker compared to what we have delivered for the Q1. Is it because there's lack of new games and also the seasonality? Given we're going to launch the TLBB in Q3, should we expect a pretty meaningful sequential bounce in the Q3 and then Q4 ? Thank you.
All right. The first question, basically, answering, continue with the previous question about advertising. I want to draw the attention, your attention that actually in Q1, and also the Q2 forecast, our advertising in terms of RMB is actually represent a growth of 2%, both 2% in Q1 and 2% in Q2. 3% in Q2 in growth, you know, in terms of guidance, because of the after the currency exchange, I mean, adjustments. That's what I want to, you know, point it out. I think real estate is just basically no hope. Okay?
Advertising on real estate is just not at all, not possible, any growth or. This is one of the, you know, big-ticket right item. In terms of auto industry, yes, we do see some opportunities, and I hope that in Q3, we'll see some pick up of advertising recovery, because competition, especially if the electric car industry, intense competition drive the, you know, the marketing, especially if we can provide some unique differentiated marketing package, unique that can really, you know, have their brand, you know, exposed across the whole, you know, in social network industry, then there represents opportunities. They will spend money on our platform.
I have more hope for this small-ticket item, FMCG and. The good thing about our advertising platform is that, you know, any businesses, any products, they need market, they need to have a brand, be a brand building. They will, you know, they need our platform. If one industry, you know, just went down, there's other industries emerging and people spending, as I mentioned, the lipstick effect, that people in some small item area, that's FMCG or even some, you know, luxury goods. I mean, some, the cosmetics and all those places and actually they present some opportunity, because people have the money now.
Just like now people, you know, as people, you know, during the May Holiday, people goes to Zibo to have kao rou. You know, that's the kind of really low-cost spending, right? People don't have much large items to go to the, you know, fancy hotels and or to have the sports clubs to, you know, health clubs to spend. People do have some left with some money to spend on other small item things. That's the FMCG side that we see some opportunity in the later half of the year. We look at growth.
Thank you.
Yeah. yeah. Gaming.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Once again, to ask question, please press star one one. We appear to have no further question at this time. Thank you everyone. That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.