YouTube Statistics (2026): $11,207M Q3 Ad Revenue and 75 Key Stats

A data roundup of YouTube’s revenue, audience, creator economy and AI features, taken only from primary sources: Alphabet’s SEC filings and earnings releases through Q3 2026, YouTube’s own press page and CEO letter, and Pew Research Center surveys.

YouTube ads brought in $11,207 million in Q3 2026, up from $10,261 million a year earlier, and YouTube’s ads and subscriptions together passed $60 billion in 2025 (Q3 2026 release, Q4 2025 release). Pick this page if you need YouTube numbers you can cite with a filing behind them. Skip it if you want channel-level analytics, because no primary source publishes those. The reason YouTube matters to software marketers now is search: Pew found that Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit are the most cited sources in Google’s AI summaries. If buyers ask AI tools about your category, a YouTube video may be one of the sources the answer leans on, so it belongs next to your AI visibility tools shortlist. Every figure below has a verbatim quote in our ledger.

Key takeaways

• $11,207M of YouTube ads revenue in Q3 2026, against $10,261M in Q3 2025 (Q3 2026 release)
• $60 billion in YouTube ads and subscription revenue for 2025 (Q4 2025 release)
• 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, including trials (Q3 2026 release)
• 84% of U.S. adults say they use YouTube, the most of any platform Pew asked about (Pew fact sheet)
• 200 billion daily Shorts views on average (YouTube for Press)
• 15% of the sources in Google AI summaries came from Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit combined (Pew)
• 20 million people used YouTube’s AI Ask tool in December 2025 (YouTube CEO letter)

How much revenue does YouTube make?

Alphabet reports YouTube ads as its own revenue line. YouTube subscription revenue (YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, NFL Sunday Ticket) is folded into “Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices” together with Google One and other products, so the only full YouTube total is the one Alphabet states in words once a year. Figures from the tables are in millions of dollars, which is how the filings report them.

1. YouTube ads revenue was $11,207M in Q3 2026, up from $10,261M in Q3 2025 (Q3 2026 release).
2. YouTube ads revenue rose $946 million in Q3 2026 and $3.2 billion in the first nine months of 2026 (Q3 2026 10-Q).
3. YouTube ads revenue for the first nine months of 2026 was $32,145M, against $28,984M a year earlier (Q3 2026 10-Q).
4. Brand advertising led YouTube’s Q3 2026 growth, followed by direct response (Q3 2026 10-Q). In 2025 the order was reversed, with direct response first.
5. YouTube ads grew 13% in Q2 2026, to $11,055M (Q2 2026 release).
6. YouTube ads grew 11% in Q1 2026, to $9,883M (Q1 2026 release).
7. YouTube ads grew 9% in Q4 2025, to $11,383M, the largest of the twelve quarters on this page (Q4 2025 release). Q4 carries the holiday ad season every year.
8. YouTube’s ads and subscription revenue exceeded $60 billion for the full year 2025 (Q4 2025 release).
9. YouTube’s ads and subscription revenue first passed $50 billion over four quarters in Q3 2024 (Q3 2024 release).
10. YouTube ads revenue was $40,367M in 2025, up from $36,147M in 2024 (2025 10-K).
11. YouTube ads revenue rose $4.2 billion in 2025, led by direct response advertising (2025 10-K).
12. YouTube ads revenue rose $4.6 billion in 2024, led by brand advertising (2024 10-K).
13. YouTube ads revenue rose $2.3 billion in 2023 (2023 10-K).
14. YouTube ads revenue was $28,845M in 2021, $29,243M in 2022 and $31,510M in 2023 (2023 10-K). Growth nearly stalled in 2022 before picking up again.
15. Cloud and YouTube together exited 2024 at an annual revenue run rate of $110 billion (Q4 2024 release).
16. Google subscriptions, platforms and devices revenue, which includes YouTube subscriptions, was $14,290M in Q3 2026, up from $12,870M (Q3 2026 release).
17. Alphabet says YouTube ads monetize at a lower rate than its traditional search ads (2023 10-K). That is why YouTube growth can lift revenue without matching Search’s margins.
18. Content acquisition costs, the payments to licensors of video and other content, are primarily related to YouTube (Q3 2026 10-Q).

Source: Alphabet 2023 10-K and 2025 10-K. Year-over-year change is our calculation from the reported figures.

YouTube ad revenue by quarter

Twelve quarters of YouTube ads revenue from Alphabet’s earnings releases. The year-over-year change is our own division of the two reported figures in each release.

Source: Alphabet earnings releases (SEC Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1) for each quarter, linked in the list below and in Sources.

19. YouTube ads revenue was $9,200M in Q4 2023, up from $7,963M (Q4 2023 release).
20. YouTube ads revenue was $8,090M in Q1 2024, up from $6,693M (Q1 2024 release).
21. YouTube ads revenue was $8,663M in Q2 2024, up from $7,665M (Q2 2024 release).
22. YouTube ads revenue was $8,921M in Q3 2024, up from $7,952M (Q3 2024 release).
23. YouTube ads revenue was $10,473M in Q4 2024, up from $9,200M (Q4 2024 release).
24. YouTube ads revenue was $8,927M in Q1 2025, up from $8,090M (Q1 2025 release).
25. YouTube ads revenue was $9,796M in Q2 2025, up from $8,663M (Q2 2025 release).
26. YouTube ads revenue was $10,261M in Q3 2025, up from $8,921M (Q3 2025 release).

How many subscribers does YouTube have?

Alphabet discloses subscriptions in the CEO quotes of its earnings releases. The company-wide paid subscription count covers Google One as well as YouTube, so it is a ceiling for YouTube, not a YouTube figure.

27. YouTube Music and Premium passed 150 million subscribers globally, including trials, in Q3 2026 (Q3 2026 release).
28. Alphabet’s paid subscriptions reached 350 million in Q1 2026, with YouTube and Google One the key drivers (Q1 2026 release).
29. Alphabet had over 325 million paid subscriptions at the end of 2025, led by Google One and YouTube Premium (Q4 2025 release).
30. Alphabet had over 300 million paid subscriptions in Q3 2025 (Q3 2025 release).
31. Alphabet passed 270 million paid subscriptions in Q1 2025, driven by YouTube and Google One (Q1 2025 release).
32. Subscription growth in 2024 came largely from more paid subscribers for YouTube services, followed by Google One (2024 10-K).

Source: Alphabet earnings releases for Q1 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025 and Q1 2026.

How many people use YouTube?

YouTube itself only says it has “billions of monthly logged-in users”, so the most precise audience data comes from Pew Research Center’s surveys of U.S. adults and teens.

33. 84% of U.S. adults say they ever use YouTube, in Pew’s 2026 survey (Pew fact sheet). That is the highest share of any platform Pew asked about, ahead of Facebook.
34. YouTube use among U.S. adults rose from 73% in 2018 to 81% in 2021 (Pew fact sheet).
35. 85% of U.S. adults said they used YouTube in 2024 (Pew fact sheet). The 2026 reading of 84% means use has plateaued.
36. 95% of adults aged 18 to 29 use YouTube, against 65% of those 65 and older (Pew fact sheet). The two middle age groups sit at 91% and 85%.
37. 90% of adults in households earning $100,000 or more use YouTube, against 77% under $30,000 (Pew fact sheet).
38. 78% of rural adults use YouTube, against 87% of urban and 86% of suburban adults (Pew fact sheet).
39. 33% of U.S. adults visit YouTube several times a day, and about half at least daily (Pew, 2025).
40. Roughly nine in ten U.S. teens use YouTube (Pew teens survey).
41. Roughly three-quarters of U.S. teens use YouTube every day (Pew teens survey).
42. 94% of teen boys use YouTube, against 89% of teen girls (Pew teens survey).
43. 20% of teen boys and 13% of teen girls say they are on YouTube almost constantly (Pew teens survey).
44. 35% of Black teens say they are on YouTube almost constantly, against 23% of Hispanic and 8% of White teens (Pew teens survey).
45. Over 1.7 billion unique viewers watched World Cup-related videos during the FIFA World Cup 2026 (Q2 2026 release).

Source: Pew Research Center, Americans’ Use of Social Media, survey of U.S. adults conducted Jan. 30 to June 18, 2026.

How big is YouTube’s content library and Shorts?

46. Over 20 million videos are uploaded to YouTube each day on average (YouTube for Press).
47. YouTube Shorts averages over 200 billion daily views (YouTube for Press).
48. YouTube has localized versions in over 100 countries across 80 languages (YouTube for Press).
49. YouTube has been #1 in U.S. streaming watch time for nearly three years, according to Nielsen as of January 2026 (YouTube for Press).
50. Alphabet called YouTube the leader in streaming watchtime and podcasts at the end of 2024 (Q4 2024 release).

How much does YouTube pay creators?

These are YouTube’s own claims, made in its CEO’s 2026 letter.

51. YouTube paid over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies in the past four years, per its January 2026 letter (YouTube CEO letter).
52. YouTube says its ecosystem contributed $55 billion to U.S. GDP in 2024 and supported more than 490,000 full-time jobs (YouTube CEO letter).
53. Over 500,000 creators are in YouTube Shopping (YouTube CEO letter).

How is YouTube using AI?

54. More than 20 million users asked YouTube’s AI Ask tool about the videos they watched in December 2025 (YouTube CEO letter).
55. More than 1M channels used YouTube’s AI creation tools daily in December 2025 (YouTube CEO letter).
56. YouTube averaged more than 6 million daily viewers who watched at least 10 minutes of autodubbed content in December 2025 (YouTube CEO letter).
57. The Gemini app reached one billion users in Q3 2026, which Alphabet calls the fastest-growing product in Google’s history (Q3 2026 release). See our Gemini statistics for the full series.
58. The Gemini App had 950 million monthly active users in Q2 2026 (Q2 2026 release).
59. The Gemini App had over 750 million monthly active users at the end of 2025 (Q4 2025 release).
60. The Gemini App had over 650 million monthly active users in Q3 2025 (Q3 2025 release).
61. Google’s first-party model APIs processed nearly 32 billion tokens per minute in Q3 2026, more than four times a year earlier (Q3 2026 release).

Is YouTube cited in AI search answers?

Yes, and it is one of the most cited domains of all. Pew analyzed the March 2025 browsing of 900 U.S. adults and the Google results they saw. It is the most rigorous public data on which sites Google’s AI summaries cite.

62. Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit are the most frequently cited sources in both Google AI summaries and standard search results (Pew).
63. Together those three sites made up 15% of the sources in AI summaries and 17% of the sources in standard results (Pew).
64. YouTube links were somewhat more common in standard search results than in AI summaries (Pew). Wikipedia showed the opposite pattern.
65. 18% of the Google searches in Pew’s study produced an AI summary (Pew).
66. Users clicked a link inside an AI summary on just 1% of visits (Pew).
67. Users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did (Pew).
68. Google’s AI Overviews reached 1.5 billion users per month in Q1 2025 (Q1 2025 release). More on that in our Google AI Overviews statistics.
69. Alphabet says its Search query growth in Q3 2026 was the highest in five years, with Search & other revenue up 12% (Q3 2026 release).
70. Google Search & other revenue was $63,350M in Q3 2026, against $56,567M a year earlier (Q3 2026 release). YouTube ads were a little under a fifth of that size.
71. Alphabet’s total revenue rose 25% to $127.6 billion in Q3 2026 (Q3 2026 release).

What it means for buyers. If an AI answer about your category cites a YouTube review, a Reddit thread and a Wikipedia page, your own site may not be cited at all, and Pew’s click data shows people rarely click through to check. You cannot fix that without first seeing which sources the answers use.

What to do with this data

• Find out which sources AI answers cite for your category. Mentionova re-asks your buying prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews and shows the sources each answer cited, so you can see when a YouTube video or Reddit thread is doing the talking. It is #1 in our AI citation tracking tools and AI visibility tools roundups.
• Treat Reddit the same way. Pew puts Reddit in the same top three. Our Reddit SEO tools guide covers the tools that find the threads AI quotes, and our Reddit statistics cover the platform itself.
• Make videos that answer buying questions. YouTube’s Ask tool and Google’s AI summaries both work from what is said in the video, so a clear spoken answer to a common question is more useful than a vague brand film. Our video marketing statistics cover the production side.
• Do not expect clicks to show the effect. With clicks on AI summary links at 1% of visits, measure mentions and citations, not just referral traffic.
• Read YouTube next to Search. Compare with our Google Search statistics, Wikipedia statistics and AI search statistics.

Definitions

• YouTube ads: Alphabet’s revenue line for ads on YouTube properties.
• Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices: the revenue line that includes YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, NFL Sunday Ticket, Google One, Google Play and devices. YouTube subscriptions are not broken out.
• Paid subscriptions: Alphabet’s company-wide count of paid consumer subscriptions, including Google One.
• Content acquisition costs: payments to the owners of video and other content that Alphabet licenses, mostly for YouTube.
• AI summary: Pew’s term for Google’s AI Overviews in its browsing study.

Frequently asked questions

How much revenue does YouTube make?

YouTube’s ads and subscription revenue exceeded $60 billion in 2025, according to Alphabet. YouTube ads alone were $40,367 million in 2025 and $11,207 million in Q3 2026. Alphabet does not report YouTube subscription revenue on its own.

How many people use YouTube?

YouTube says it has billions of monthly logged-in users but does not publish an exact number. In the U.S., Pew’s 2026 survey found 84% of adults use YouTube, the highest share of any platform it asked about, and roughly nine in ten teens use it.

How many YouTube Premium subscribers are there?

Alphabet said it passed 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers globally, including trials, in Q3 2026. Its company-wide paid subscriptions, which include Google One, reached 350 million in Q1 2026.

Is YouTube growing?

Yes, but more slowly than Google Cloud. By our calculation from Alphabet’s figures, YouTube ads grew about 9% year over year in Q3 2026, 13% in Q2 and 11% in Q1, and 11.7% for full-year 2025.

How many videos are uploaded to YouTube each day?

YouTube says over 20 million videos are uploaded each day on average, and Shorts average over 200 billion daily views.

How much has YouTube paid creators?

YouTube says it paid over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies in the past four years, and that its ecosystem contributed $55 billion to U.S. GDP in 2024. Both figures are YouTube’s own claims.

Does Google’s AI cite YouTube videos?

Yes. Pew found Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the most cited sources in Google’s AI summaries, making up 15% of the sources together. YouTube links were somewhat more common in regular results than in AI summaries.

Do AI search engines like ChatGPT cite YouTube?

There is no primary-source figure for ChatGPT or Perplexity. The reliable way to know is to track the prompts that matter to your business and look at the cited sources, which AI visibility tools such as Mentionova do.

What share of teens use YouTube almost constantly?

Pew’s 2025 survey found 20% of teen boys and 13% of girls say they are on YouTube almost constantly, and 35% of Black teens say so.

How does YouTube make money besides ads?

Through YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium and NFL Sunday Ticket subscriptions, which Alphabet reports inside Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices ($14,290 million in Q3 2026, including Google One and devices). Paid subscriber growth for YouTube services drove most of that line’s growth in 2024.

How we compiled these statistics

We fetched 22 primary source pages on October 31, 2026 and recorded 75 data points in docs/content/stats-ledgers/youtube-statistics.json. Every numbered figure above maps to a ledger row with a verbatim quote from the page we fetched. Financial figures come from documents Alphabet filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: twelve quarterly earnings releases from Q4 2023 to Q3 2026, the Q3 2026 Form 10-Q and the 2023, 2024 and 2025 Forms 10-K. Platform figures come from YouTube’s press page and its CEO’s 2026 letter, which are YouTube’s own claims. Audience and AI-search figures come from Pew Research Center. We did not use traffic estimators, third-party “statistics” sites or market-research resellers. The year-over-year changes in the two revenue tables are our own calculation and are labeled as such. Related reading: Gemini statistics and Google AI Overviews statistics.

Sources

• Alphabet: Q3 2026 earnings release (SEC Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, October 28, 2026)
• Alphabet: Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for Q3 2026 (SEC, filed October 29, 2026)
• Alphabet: Q2 2026 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q1 2026 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q4 2025 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q3 2025 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q2 2025 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q1 2025 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q4 2024 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q3 2024 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q2 2024 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q1 2024 earnings release
• Alphabet: Q4 2023 earnings release
• Alphabet: Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025
• Alphabet: Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2024
• Alphabet: Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2023
• YouTube for Press: YouTube by the numbers
• YouTube: From the CEO, What’s coming to YouTube in 2026
• Pew Research Center: Americans’ Use of Social Media (fact sheet)
• Pew Research Center: Americans’ Social Media Use 2025
• Pew Research Center: Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025
• Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears