YouTube is the largest video site in the world and, to most of the people who use it, a free one. It is also a business inside Alphabet, one of the largest companies in the world by revenue, and how much of Alphabet's money comes from YouTube is a question the company answers only halfway.
The half it answers is advertising, which gets its own line in every quarterly release. The other half, subscriptions, is folded into a line that also carries Pixel phones and app-store fees, so a reader who takes the headline YouTube number is taking half of YouTube.
Read properly, YouTube is two businesses under one brand, and sizing it means taking the one combined total Alphabet has disclosed and splitting it with the arithmetic the filings allow.
For anyone holding Alphabet through a token or a perpetual, that split is the difference between what you can read in a release and what you own.
What is YouTube inside Alphabet?
YouTube brought Alphabet more than $60 billion in 2025 across ads and subscriptions, which is about 15% of the company's $402.8 billion in revenue, or roughly one dollar in seven (source: Alphabet Q4 2025 release). It earns that money in two ways, and Alphabet reports only one of them as a line of its own.
The visible half is ads: adding the four quarterly figures Alphabet disclosed for 2025 gives $40.4 billion of YouTube ad revenue, so the subscription half, by subtraction from the $60 billion the CEO cited, came to roughly $20 billion (source: Alphabet Q4 2025 release). In the most recent quarter, the three months to June 30, 2026, YouTube ads reached $11.1 billion, up 13% from a year earlier. On the same call, the executive who runs Google's commercial side said the subscription business is now growing faster than ads (source: Alphabet 8-K).
How YouTube makes money from advertising
YouTube advertising is the sale of attention on videos, and Alphabet sells it in two broad forms. Brand advertising is what a car maker or a consumer goods company buys to be seen by a large audience. Direct response advertising is what a small business buys when it wants a viewer to click, sign up, or purchase right away.
In the quarter to June 30, 2026, YouTube ad revenue rose 13% to $11.1 billion. The CFO credited direct response first and brand second, with particular strength on TV screens (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call).
The quarter had an unusual tailwind. More than 1.7 billion unique viewers watched World Cup-related videos on YouTube during the FIFA World Cup 2026, and more than 550 million of them watched on a TV (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call). Shorts, the short-form vertical feed, was named as a growing source of demand from advertisers who also buy on social platforms. A newer feature lets a viewer buy directly on a connected TV with Google Pay. The living-room screen becomes a place where an ad can close a sale as well as open one (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call).
For a holder, the run-rate matters more than any single quarter, and the four most recent quarters Alphabet has disclosed show it.
Quarter | YouTube ads revenue | Change on the year before |
|---|---|---|
Q3 2025 (to September 30, 2025) | $10.3 billion | +15% |
Q4 2025 (to December 31, 2025) | $11.4 billion | +9% |
Q1 2026 (to March 31, 2026) | $9.9 billion | +11% |
Q2 2026 (to June 30, 2026) | $11.1 billion | +13% |
Those four quarters add up to $42.6 billion of ad revenue in the twelve months to June 30, 2026. Alphabet's total revenue over the same period was $445.9 billion. YouTube ads alone was therefore about 9.5% of everything Alphabet sold (source: Alphabet Q3 2025 release). Within Alphabet's ads alone, YouTube was 13.5% of the $81.6 billion Google took in ads during the June quarter, with Google Search at $63.3 billion making up most of the rest (source: Alphabet 8-K).
How YouTube makes money from subscriptions
YouTube's second business sells a recurring fee for something the free service does not give you. YouTube Premium removes ads and adds background play and downloads, and YouTube Music is the standalone music app bundled with it, and together with YouTube TV and the NFL package they make up the subscription side.
YouTube TV is a full replacement for a cable package in the US, and NFL Sunday Ticket is the out-of-market football package YouTube took over from DirecTV in 2023. Alphabet's own annual report names those four as the YouTube services inside its subscription revenue (source: Alphabet 10-K).
Alphabet has never published a dollar figure for YouTube subscriptions on its own, which is why the $20 billion for 2025 is an inference: the CEO's statement that YouTube "surpassed $60 billion across ads and subscriptions", less the four disclosed ad quarters (source: Alphabet Q4 2025 release). What Alphabet does disclose is the count. Paid subscriptions across all of its consumer services reached 300 million in the third quarter of 2025, passed 325 million by year end, and stood at 350 million by the first quarter of 2026 (source: Alphabet Q1 2026 release). Each time, the CEO named YouTube and Google One as the two drivers. YouTube Music and Premium on their own passed 125 million subscribers, including people on free trials, in March 2025 (source: YouTube Official Blog). Alphabet's filings carry no YouTube TV line, and the last figure YouTube itself gave was more than 8 million subscribers, in its CEO's February 2025 letter (source: YouTube Official Blog, 2025 letter).
The direction is clearer than the level. On the July 22, 2026 earnings call, Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, said YouTube's subscription business "is growing faster than Ads, particularly driven by YouTube Music and Premium" (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call).
Where YouTube revenue appears in Alphabet's earnings
Both YouTube businesses sit inside Google Services, the segment that also holds Search, the Play Store and Pixel phones, as well as Google's ad network; how the segments fit together is set out in Alphabet business segments explained. That segment produced $94.5 billion of the $119.8 billion Alphabet reported for the June 2026 quarter (source: Alphabet 8-K).
Within that segment, Alphabet splits revenue into named lines, and YouTube's two businesses land in two different ones: YouTube ads at $11.1 billion, and Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices at $12.9 billion (source: Alphabet 8-K).
Reporting line, June 2026 quarter | Revenue | Where YouTube sits in it |
|---|---|---|
YouTube ads | $11.1 billion | The whole line is YouTube ads |
Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices | $12.9 billion | YouTube Premium, Music, TV and the NFL package, mixed with Google One, Play Store sales and Pixel hardware |
Alphabet defines the second line as consumer subscriptions "which primarily include revenues from YouTube services, such as YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, and NFL Sunday Ticket, as well as Google One", plus Google Play app and in-app sales, plus Pixel devices (source: Alphabet 10-K). That line grew 15% in the June quarter to $12.9 billion, and the CFO credited both YouTube subscriptions and Google One, whose growth came from demand for AI plans (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call). For the full year 2025 the line reached $48.0 billion, up from $40.3 billion in 2024 (source: Alphabet 10-K).
The subscription money is in the accounts too, sitting between a phone and an app store, and nobody outside Alphabet can separate the three with certainty.
How much profit YouTube makes
Alphabet does not disclose YouTube's profit, and it never has. Operating income is reported for three segments only: Google Services, Google Cloud and Other Bets. Google Services earned $39.5 billion in the June 2026 quarter on a 41.8% margin, and that figure blends YouTube with Search, which is far larger (source: Alphabet 8-K).
The operating income table has no line for YouTube, so any YouTube margin you read, and any valuation built on one, is somebody's model.
What Alphabet does say about YouTube's costs points in one direction. In the June quarter, other cost of revenues rose 22% to $29.8 billion, and the CFO listed "content acquisition costs, largely for YouTube" as one of three drivers (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call). Content acquisition is the money YouTube pays out to the people and companies whose videos and music it shows, plus rights fees for sports, and it grows with the business by design. With the cost disclosed at the Alphabet level and the revenue split across two lines, YouTube's true margin is one of the larger unknowns in a company that publishes a great deal.
One quarterly figure needs the same care. Alphabet reported $112.2 billion of net income for the June 2026 quarter, roughly four times the year before, and almost all of the jump came from a $99.0 billion gain on equity securities the company holds (source: Alphabet 8-K). YouTube and Search had nothing to do with that figure. The operating story, the one YouTube belongs to, was a 30% rise in operating income, which is a strong quarter and a very different number from the headline.
YouTube's share of TV viewing and why it matters
Both revenue lines depend on the same underlying fact, which is how much time people spend watching. Nielsen, which measures US television audiences, reported on September 10, 2026 that YouTube took a record 14.2% of all US television time in July 2026. That put it ahead of every other media company by five full share points (source: Nielsen).
Streaming as a whole reached 49.0% of TV time that month, against 19.5% for broadcast and 18.7% for cable (source: Nielsen). Nielsen has said its methodology will be updated this fall, so later readings may not line up exactly with July's.
Both executives kept coming back to one phrase on the July call: the living room. The CFO credited the living room for the strength in YouTube ads, and the business chief said the subscription business "thrives across living room screens" (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call). TV is where brand advertising has always paid the most per viewer, where a Premium subscription removes the most ads, and where YouTube TV competes directly with the cable package it replaces. The 550 million people who watched World Cup videos on a TV show how far YouTube has moved from the phone to the biggest screen in the house (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call).
What a GOOGLX or GOOGLUSDT holder owns of YouTube
YouTube has no ticker. It has never been listed on its own, so the only way to hold a claim on its earnings is to hold Alphabet. Every dollar YouTube makes reaches you at whatever share of Alphabet it represents that quarter, which was about 15% in 2025.
The mechanics of holding Alphabet as a token are set out in what tokenized Alphabet actually is.
Holding the exposure through a token or a perpetual differs from holding a registered share in one specific way. If Alphabet ever did separate YouTube, a registered Class A shareholder would receive whatever the corporate action distributed. A token or perpetual holder would receive whatever the issuer or the exchange decided to pass through, on terms set at the time. Nothing of the kind has been proposed. The practical point is smaller and more useful: when a quarter's YouTube ad number moves the Alphabet share price, it moves the token and the perpetual by the same proportion, and YouTube's ad line is about 17% the size of Search's, on the June 2026 quarter's figures.
BloFin lists Alphabet two ways, and YouTube rides inside both because both track the price of a share that YouTube helps to earn. GOOGLX/USDT Spot is a token, a tracker certificate on Alphabet Class A shares held by a third-party custodian, with the live coverage figure covered in is GOOGLX backed by proof of reserves. GOOGLUSDT Perpetual is a perpetual futures contract with leverage of up to 20x, as read in September 2026 (source: BloFin contract details).
The choice between them is holding spot versus trading the perpetual, which is the difference between owning the price and borrowing against it. How leverage and liquidation work applies to GOOGLUSDT as it does to any other perpetual. Neither gives you a piece of YouTube itself. The GOOGLX holder is "not entitled to ownership of the underlying equities, voting or information rights", and the perpetual holder owns a contract on the price and nothing behind it. You hold the price, and nothing of the segment.
If that exposure is what you want, GOOGLX/USDT Spot and the GOOGLUSDT Perpetual are both open, and Alphabet sits beside the other tokenized stocks and TradFi assets BloFin lists.
What could change YouTube's numbers
The nearest reported factor is currency. The CFO said that at July's exchange rates Alphabet expected a slight foreign exchange headwind in the third quarter, after a one-point tailwind in the second. She said the effect would be seen primarily in Search and YouTube ads (source: Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call).
YouTube sells advertising in dozens of currencies and reports in dollars, so a stronger dollar shrinks the reported line even when viewing and pricing are unchanged. Say the dollar strengthens 3% against the euro and the pound over a quarter: a YouTube ad line up 13% in local terms prints closer to 10% in dollars, with nothing about the business changed.
The second factor is already in motion: the subscription business is outgrowing ads. If that continues, a rising share of YouTube's income will sit in the line Alphabet mixes with phones and app sales, and the visible YouTube ads figure will understate YouTube by a widening margin. The combined $60 billion figure for 2025 is the company's own total for the year, and it could choose to break the two halves out (source: Alphabet Q4 2025 release).
The third factor is measurement, and it is the least visible of the four. Nielsen's methodology update this fall is expected to change how streaming compares with broadcast and cable, and because advertisers price television against those share figures, a recalibration can move ad budgets without a single viewer changing their habits (source: Nielsen).
The fourth is legal, and it is the smallest for YouTube specifically. Alphabet's two big antitrust cases concern search distribution and, in the words of the April 2025 ruling, "the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising"; YouTube's own business sits outside both (source: New York Attorney General). Google's antitrust rulings and the stock sets out where each case stands.
None of those four factors changes what a holder is exposed to, which is Alphabet's share price with YouTube at roughly a seventh of it. A perpetual differs from a dated future in never expiring, so it can be held through an earnings quarter without rolling.
Looking to gain exposure to Alphabet? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the GOOGLX/USDT Spot trading page or GOOGLUSDT Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
Can you buy YouTube stock on its own?
YouTube shares do not exist, because YouTube is a wholly owned part of Alphabet and has never been listed separately. Owning YouTube means owning Alphabet, whose Class A shares trade as GOOGL. On BloFin that exposure comes as GOOGLX/USDT Spot, a tracker token on Class A shares, or as the GOOGLUSDT Perpetual, a futures contract, and in both cases you hold Alphabet's price with YouTube inside it at roughly a 15% weight.
How many people pay for YouTube?
Alphabet counts paid subscriptions across all of its consumer services together, and it reported 350 million of them in the first quarter of 2026, up from 300 million two quarters earlier (source: Alphabet Q1 2026 release). YouTube and Google One were named as the main drivers. YouTube Music and Premium alone passed 125 million subscribers including trials in March 2025 (source: YouTube Official Blog). YouTube TV's last published figure was more than 8 million subscribers, in February 2025; Alphabet's filings do not report it.
Is YouTube growing faster than the rest of Alphabet?
It is growing more slowly than the company as a whole, even while it grows. In the June 2026 quarter YouTube ads rose 13%, Alphabet's total revenue rose 24%, and Google Cloud rose 82%, so YouTube's share of Alphabet is shrinking at the same time as its revenue climbs (source: Alphabet 8-K).
Is YouTube TV counted in YouTube's ad revenue?
YouTube TV sits in the subscription line, so its fees are outside the YouTube ads figure entirely. Alphabet's annual report places YouTube TV, together with Premium, Music and the NFL package, inside Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices, the same line that carries Google One, Play Store sales and Pixel phones (source: Alphabet 10-K). The advertising YouTube TV itself shows does count toward YouTube ads, which is one more reason the two lines are hard to separate from outside.
Is YouTube bigger than Netflix?
By revenue, yes, and by a wide margin. Alphabet said YouTube's advertising and subscriptions together surpassed $60 billion in 2025, while Netflix reported $45.2 billion of revenue for the same year (source: Netflix Q4 2025 shareholder letter). The two are built differently, since Netflix pays for its programming in advance and YouTube shares revenue with creators after the fact, which is one reason nobody outside Alphabet knows which of the two earns more profit.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. Primary sources include Alphabet's SEC filings, the Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call, and Nielsen. All facts independently verified against cited documentation current as of September 2026.
This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets are highly volatile, and trading them carries significant risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. Always do your own research and consider consulting a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.