YouTube Pumps Up Ad Revenue 13% in Q2 to Reach $9.8 Billion
YouTube, the world’s biggest video platform, keeps eating a bigger portion of the ad-spending pie.
For the second quarter of 2025, YouTube’s advertising revenue increased 13% year over year, to reach $9.796 billion — continuing a run of impressive growth off an already large base. TV is now the biggest platform for YouTube viewing, and the streaming platform’s gains are surely at the expense of traditional networks. Analysts had expected YouTube’s Q2 ad number to come in at $9.56 billion, according to StreetAccount.
Alphabet, parent of Google and YouTube, again easily beat expectations. The company reported total revenue of $96.43 billion, up 14%, and net income of $28.2 billion, or $2.31 per share. Overall, Wall Street analysts on average expected Alphabet to post revenue of $94.0 billion and earnings per share of $2.18, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.
YouTube — which is celebrating its 20th birthday this year — in April said it now hosts more than 20 billion videos. At an industry conference in May, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said YouTube Shorts, its TikTok-style short-form video product that debuted in 2020, had reached parity on revenue per watch-hour relative to core YouTube in multiple countries, including the U.S. In the first quarter of 2025, TVs surpassed mobile to become the primary devices for YouTube viewing.
Meanwhile, also in May, at the annual Google I/O conference, the company unveiled Flow, a new AI filmmaking tool designed for the Veo generative video model, which Google claimed provides “stunning cinematic outputs that excel at physics and realism.” The internet giant also announced a partnership with Darren Aronofsky for his new Primordial Soup AI-based creative tools venture, under which DeepMind is providing early-stage access to generative-AI video tools.
