YouTube generated $40.4 billion in global advertising revenue in 2025, marking an 11.7% year-over-year increase, while its total revenue, including YouTube Premium subscriptions, surpassed $60 billion for the first time.
Despite reaching new financial milestones, advertising growth is beginning to slow. After expanding by 14.7% in 2024, ad revenue growth is projected to ease to 7.0% in 2026 before edging up to 7.9% in 2027, according to WARC Media.
The report attributes the slowdown to both the platform’s increasing maturity and intensifying competition from TikTok and Netflix. If current trends continue, TikTok’s advertising business could overtake YouTube’s by 2028, driven by its growing dominance in performance marketing. Meanwhile, Netflix’s successful ad-supported subscription tier is expected to make the streamer an even stronger competitor for advertising budgets over the next 18 months.
Even so, marketers continue to view YouTube as a key media platform, with many planning to increase their advertising investment on the service this year.
The platform now reaches approximately 2.6 billion monthly users worldwide, while average daily watch time climbed from 48 minutes in 2024 to 58 minutes in 2025, reflecting deeper engagement. India remains the platform’s largest market with 500 million users, followed by the United States with 254 million.
Viewing habits are also shifting toward larger screens. In the U.S., Connected TVs now account for 45% of total YouTube watch time, underscoring the platform’s growing role in the living room.
At the same time, Shorts continues its rapid expansion, generating more than 200 billion daily views. In several major markets, Shorts has already begun generating higher revenue per watch hour than traditional video ad formats.
Music videos remain YouTube’s most-watched content category. MrBeast leads the platform with 503 million subscribers, while T-Series remains the most-viewed channel, with 322 billion lifetime views.
According to Kantar, YouTube has been named the most preferred and most trusted advertising platform among marketers for the third consecutive year, while also ranking second only to Netflix for brand safety.
The report also highlights Generation Z as YouTube’s most commercially valuable audience, with 51% of Gen Z men and 43% of Gen Z women saying they have made a purchase after seeing an ad on YouTube Shorts.
Beyond advertising, YouTube has strengthened its position in audio and AI. The platform has overtaken Spotify as the leading destination for podcast viewing on television screens and has also surpassed Reddit as the leading social platform used as a source by large language models.
