Inside YouTube’s 2025 Empire: Ads, Algorithms, and the Fight for Video Dominance
In Q4 2024, YouTube’s advertising sales reached $10.5 billion, up from $9.2 billion in Q4 2023, boosted by U.S. midterm spending. Analysts estimated YouTube’s 2024 ad revenues at $35–36 billion, about 13–14% of Alphabet’s total ad intake, with some valuing YouTube at roughly $550 billion as a standalone enterprise. As of 2025, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music have more than 125 million paying subscribers, with subscription revenues around $14.5 billion in 2024. YouTube Shorts generated over 70 billion daily views by 2023, and Shorts joined the main YouTube Partner Program in early 2023 to share ad revenue with creators. YouTube