Hollywood has another reason to fear YouTube.
The Google-owned streaming giant generated more advertising revenue last year than Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance, and Warner Bros. Discovery — combined.
YouTube’s $40.4 billion in ad revenue in 2025 exceeded the $37.8 billion sum from its four closest Hollywood competitors, according to new estimates from media research firm MoffettNathanson. (With fifth-place rival Fox added in, the traditional media cohort would be ahead of YouTube at $44.8 billion.)
That’s a substantial change from 2024, when YouTube’s $36.1 billion in ad revenue fell short of the $41.8 billion total from Disney, Comcast’s NBCU, Paramount, and WBD, per MoffettNathanson.
YouTube keeps close to half its ad revenue, paying creators a 55% cut on ads from standard videos.
The ad business isn’t the only arena YouTube dominates.
It also generated more viewership on US TVs in January than Disney, NBCU, Paramount, and WBD’s streamers combined, according to Nielsen. Netflix is the only paid streamer that rivals YouTube’s 12.5% share, with 8.8% TV viewership, though it isn’t yet a major player in ads.
YouTube also brought in nearly $22 billion in subscription revenue in 2025, driven by live-TV streamer YouTube TV, ad-free tiers YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, and the NFL Sunday Ticket service for football superfans.
Google is looking to accelerate that growth this year with “skinny bundles” for YouTube TV, including a sports-focused package.
MoffettNathanson predicted that YouTube’s subscription revenue growth would outpace that of its ads business. However, the firm still expects its ad revenue to grow at a healthy rate of about 10% in each of the next three years.
By one definition, YouTube is now the world’s biggest media company, passing Disney — if you exclude its experiences revenue — MoffettNathanson analysts Michael Nathanson and Robert Fishman said in a Monday note. However, YouTube’s ad revenue is well below tech giants like Facebook-parent Meta, which generated about $196.2 billion in ad revenue in 2025, and its own parent company, Alphabet, which made $224.5 billion last year from search ads.
Even scarier for the Hollywood giants than YouTube’s current position is that the platform may be uniquely suited to thrive as AI-powered videos and short-form clips flood the internet.
YouTube is “one of the only” media companies that “will become stronger in the age of AI,” Nathanson and Fishman wrote.
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