Alphabet‘s quarterly earnings are in, and YouTube is looking pretty swank: It overshot analyst expectations of $9.56 billion to land at $9.8 billion in ad earnings. That brings it up ~10% from Q1’s earnings of $8.9 billion.
Alphabet overall similarly beat expectations, bringing in $96.4 billion instead of the expected $94.02 billion, with a net of $28.2 billion–a 19% increase from Q2 last year.
CEO Sundar Pichai called the quarter a “standout,” with “robust growth across the company.” He largely attributed this growth to Google‘s decision to embrace generative artificial intelligence, a choice we’ve seen ripple through YouTube.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
“AI is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum,” he said. “Search delivered double-digit revenue growth, and our new features, like AI Overviews and AI Mode, are performing well.”
We’re betting Alphabet is especially pleased with the Search bump for two reasons: one, TikTok accidentally became a search engine for The Youths and leaned into that with more functionalities and more ads; and two, OpenAI is currently building a browser intended to challenge Chrome, which drives significant traffic to Search and other Google products.
But while Search has challengers, there’s one sector of Alphabet that increasingly does not.
YouTube.
Pichai noted “strong performance” from the platform, reiterating that YouTube is the single most-watched video destination in the United States. Its TV superdominance continues: According to Nielsen’s latest numbers, YouTube accounted for 12.8% of all TV usage in June. Its closest competitor is Netflix with 8.3%. No other streaming service or linear/broadcast TV network reached 5%.
That’s the same sort of lead that puts MrBeast at the top of our most-watched charts every time he posts a video. In terms of raw viewership and follower count, he has no peers in the content creation space. And his home platform is right there with him. Its lead is simply too large.
(The Hollywood Reporter theorizes this lead might bring Netflix around to the idea of embracing user-generated content. We’re not so sure about that, but we do think it’ll continue to “farm” YouTube talent for its own purposes.)
YouTube’s TV viewership wasn’t the only thing Pichai hyped. He also talked up Shorts, which now collectively generate 200 billion views per day. Good thing YouTube started running ads on them, eh?
Pichai gave a nod to the upcoming Chargers vs Chiefs NFL game, which will be played Sept. 5 in São Paulo and for which YouTube won the exclusive streaming rights. It plans to stream the game for free, but clearly intends for that to be just a taste, encouraging viewers to sign up for the much pricier NFL Sunday Ticket.
All these results are inspiring Alphabet to invest more over the rest of this year.
“With this strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services, we are increasing our investment in capital expenditures in 2025 to approximately $85 billion and are excited by the opportunity ahead,” Pichai said.
What do we expect? Well, we’re no Wall Street analysts, but we know YouTube. Thanks to our Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Reports, we’re aware YouTube is seeing more and more Shorts ad partnerships per week, indicating brands are embracing the format as valuable ground for their marketing budgets. And since YouTube keeps introducing more connected TV ad opportunities to match its growing market share, brands will likely be keen to follow audiences there, too.
Basically? Shorts and connected TV continue to grow–and they’ll keep driving YouTube’s ad revenue to higher and higher heights.
