Photo Credit: Alexander Shatov
YouTube keeps raking in the cash from its advertisers across the globe, with ad revenue approaching $9 billion in the first quarter of 2025.
YouTube turned 20 this year, and the company continues to boast significant growth for its investors. YouTube’s ad revenue reached $8.93 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up 10.3% year-over-year—just slightly behind analyst expectations of $8.97 billion.
That doesn’t even include the additional billions in revenue generated through YouTube’s subscription services, such as YouTube TV and YouTube Premium, which are not disclosed during Alphabet’s earnings reports.
Google and YouTube parent Alphabet easily topped Wall Street estimates for Q1, with the company reporting over 270 million paid subscriptions across its services. Those numbers are driven by YouTube and Google One, the company’s consumer cloud storage platform.
Together, YouTube Music and Premium exceeded 125 million subs during the quarter, further driven by the company expanding its more affordable Premium Lite model to users in the US. Premium Lite is priced at $7.99 per month compared to $13.99 per month for YouTube Premium and $10.99 per month for YouTube Music.
“We’re pleased with our strong Q1 results, which reflect healthy growth and momentum across the business,” said Sundar Pichai, Alphabet and Google CEO.
“Search saw continued strong growth, boosted by the engagement we’re seeing with features like AI Overviews, which now has 1.5 billion users per month. Driven by YouTube and Google One, we surpassed 270 million paid subscriptions. And Cloud grew rapidly with significant demand for our solutions.”
YouTube’s full-year 2024 report saw an estimated $54.2 billion in revenue, making it the second-largest media company behind Disney. In 2025, it’s rapidly becoming poised to take the top spot, according to analysts.
Whether the macroeconomic uncertainty will have an impact on YouTube’s ad revenue in Q2 remains to be seen. According to Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler, “It’s too early to really comment on that,” but that new US tariffs will “obviously cause a slight headwind to our ads business” abroad.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.