YouTube’s subscription business is expanding at a faster pace than its advertising segment, Alphabet executives said as the company reported second-quarter 2026 earnings. YouTube advertising brought in $11.06 billion in the quarter, a 12.9% year-on-year increase.
Philipp Schindler, Alphabet’s SVP and chief business officer, noted during the earnings call:
“YouTube’s subscription business, which thrives across living room screens, is growing faster than ads, particularly driven by YouTube Music and Premium.”
CFO Anat Ashkenazi later reinforced the point, stating that subscription, platforms and devices revenues rose 15% to $12.9 billion, citing strong growth in YouTube subscriptions and Google One, the latter boosted by demand for AI plans.
In February, Alphabet disclosed that YouTube’s ad revenue for the full year 2025 was $40.37 billion, with subscriptions pushing total YouTube revenues past $60 billion, meaning subscriptions accounted for roughly a third of the total.
Alphabet also shared updates on its AI products. The Gemini app now has 950 million monthly active users, with daily active users tripling over the past year. Google’s ‘AI mode’ in Search has surpassed one billion monthly active users. CEO Sundar Pichai addressed criticism, saying:
“we’re now sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search.”
