Google has revealed the ad revenue that it generated solely from YouTube, revealing a stunning $9.79 billion earned in Q2 2025. The number seems to indicate that YouTube is as popular as ever, and Google is reaping the rewards.
Google generates money from its YouTube video platform in a few different ways, including users "joining" channels with a monthly payment, a portion of the Super Chat donations made during livestreams, the YouTube Premium subscription service, and of course, ads. This is in addition to other earnings made in Google's overall business.
YouTube is Making a Change to How Ads Work
YouTube announces a change that will be making to how ads work on videos on its service, hoping to improve it for both viewers and content creators.
Now, Google has revealed its latest earnings in its quarterly report, revealing that during the second quarter of 2025, YouTube ads netted the company a staggering $9.79 billion USD. While impressive, it's still only a fraction of what some of Google's other services are bringing in. Overall advertising on Google netted the company an eye-watering $71.34 billion, while subscriptions to its services, platforms, and devices brought home $11.20 billion. Google Cloud also didn't do too badly for itself, with $13.62 billion earned.
YouTube's Advertising Earnings Keep Going Up
Aside from being a tremendous number, this statistic has seen a significant increase since 2024. During Q2 of 2024, YouTube stated that it earned $8.66 billion from ads on the video platform. For comparison's sake, in 2021, YouTube reported a revenue of $7.2 billion over the course of its third quarter. Meanwhile, Google reported that YouTube ads had generated $36 billion over the course of the entirety of 2024. While there's still some time left, it seems that Google is on-track to pass that number in 2025.
However, these numbers haven't come without controversy. Back in 2021, Google drew backlash when it announced that it was enabling ads on all eligible YouTube videos, regardless of whether the creators were part of the Partner Program, which pays out a portion of the advertisement proceeds to the video uploader. In more recent times, YouTube has been cracking down on adblockers, likely increasing the number of YouTube users who actually see ads while watching videos on the service. Ads have also started appearing in new places, like during pause screens.
While some viewers have been vocal in their distaste for the increase in advertising, with profits like these, it's unlikely that Google will reverse course. At this point, the only thing users can effectively do to avoid ads on YouTube is to join YouTube Premium, which removes the majority of them from videos.
