YouTube had a strong showing in the second quarter for 2025, with ad revenue for the video platform up 13.1% year-over-year, hitting $9.8 billion. That ad revenue growth was spearheaded by direct response marketing.
In June, YouTube once again broke a television viewership record, accounting for 12.8% of overall TV viewership, according to Nielsen. That was the highest share YouTube or any single platform has ever secured, and it continued YouTube’s two-year reign as the most watched platform on TV. Alphabet shared that sports fans consumed more than 40 million hours of sports content on YouTube annually and that YouTube Shorts is averaging 200 million daily views. In the past 12 months, YouTube ads viewed on CTV (connected TV) screens drove over 1 billion conversions. Specifically, the platform saw retail growth thanks to CTV shopping ads and QR codes.
The company’s subscription platforms and devices revenues also increased 20% during the quarter, hitting $11.2 billion. That jump was driven by YouTube subscription offerings. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, emphasized that YouTube subscriptions — YouTube TV, YouTube Music and YouTube Premium — are “increasingly important” for the company.
Here are the key takeaways:
Net Income: Grew 19% year-over-year to $28.2 billion for the quarter
Earnings Per Share: $2.31 compared to the $2.20 share expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance
Revenue: $96.43 billion compared to the $94 billion expected by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance
YouTube Ad Revenue: Grew 13.1% year-over-year to $9.8 billion
Google Subscriptions, Platforms and Devices: Grew 20% year-over-year to $11.2 billion
YouTube’s ad results paired with growth in Google search, Google Cloud and the subscriptions, platforms and devices divisions to lead to an overall positive quarter for the tech giant. Overall, revenue hit $96.4 billion, above Wall Street expectations.
The category “Google Search and other” also saw double-digit growth, hitting $54.2 billion during the quarter, a 11.7% year-over-year increase. That bounce was largely attributed to the success of Google’s AI Overview as well as AI Mode, a new feature that was launched during the quarter.
Alphabet is intent on investing in AI. The company said it now expects to spend $85 billion in capital expenditure in 2025, $10 billion more than its previous estimate of $75 billion. That increase is due to the strong demand for Google’s Cloud products and services, and it will also be used to invest in servers to handle AI processing. More is expected to be spent in 2026.
“On the CapEx stuff, obviously we are seeing strong momentum across our portfolio and especially in Cloud,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said during the company’s earnings call on Wednesday.
The biggest story around Alphabet continues to revolve around AI. “It’s the direction where we are investing the most,” Pichai said of Google’s Gemini 2.5 AI model. “This is definitely exciting progress, including in the models we haven’t fully released yet.”
In the second quarter, Google rolled out several new AI products including its subscription tier Google AI Ultra, a venture fund designed to invest in AI startups and AI Mode, a product placed to the side of Google’s search bar that allows users to ask Google more detailed questions. The company also announced a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker to develop a line of AI-powered smart glasses.
“We are super excited about our investment in glasses and found experiences have taken a dramatic step up compared to the last iteration,” Pichai said. “It’ll be an exciting new emerging category, but I still expect phones to be at the center of experience for the next two to three years at least.”
Google also appointed Koray Kavukcuoglu, the former chief technology officer for Google DeepMind, to the new role of chief AI architect. That major appointment came during the same quarter that Google reduced its workforce, offering buyouts to U.S.-based employees who worked on the search, ads and commerce teams.
