YouTube's Revenues Outstrip Netflix
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"YouTube is one of - if not the - most-used of all digital offerings, with over 70 percent of international consumers using it weekly, and over 50 percent using it daily," says Midia Research.
Last year, YouTube celebrated the 20th anniversary of its first-ever video: a grainy 19-second clip of cofounder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. Since 2005, YouTube - bought by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006 - has grown from a simple video-sharing site into a media powerhouse, with more than 20 billion videos uploaded. YouTube now leads America's TV viewing time, surpassing networks like Paramount, Fox, and Disney. Last year, YouTube was the second-largest media company by revenue ($54.2 billion) behind Disney.
Now, Google has revealed that YouTube brought in more than $60bn in revenue in 2025. The figure, which totals the money generated through advertising on YouTube as well as paid subscriptions, far surpasses streaming rival Netflix's $45bn revenue.
Midia Research said the different ways YouTube makes money - such as through adverts, or charging a monthly subscription to remove them - means it can "capitalise well" on its large audience. Google boss Sundar Pichai said YouTube Premium - its service letting users pay to remove ads between videos, or songs on its music service - had helped boost paid subscriptions across Google consumer services to more than 325 million in 2025 overall.
Whilst YouTube's $60bn revenue in 2025 beat that of rival Netflix, analytics firm Forrester said it was not an "apples-to-apples comparison", and noted that "the lion's share of YouTube's content is user-generated versus Hollywood-generated."
"YouTube is not just cat videos anymore," Netflix boss Ted Sarandos told US lawmakers in a recent Senate hearing about its plans to buy Warner Bros. "YouTube is TV".