• by Laurie Sullivan , July 23, 2025

YouTube, Google’s video platform, continues to capitalize on advertising spend. Its parent company, Alphabet, released second-quarter earnings Wednesday, reporting that revenue rose 13% year-over-year (YoY) to $9.796 billion during the second quarter of 2025.

“We continue to see strong performance in YouTube as well as subscriptions offerings,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, wrote in the earnings release. “Cloud had strong growth in revenues, backlog and profitability. Its annual revenue run-rate is now more than $50 billion.”

Making YouTube's growth potential more interesting, the ability to create all types of content with help from artificial intelligence (AI) like the Ikea ad concept that went viral, showing how AI ads can reduce the time and cost to create them.

The ad capitalizes on Ikea's branding -- the build-it-yourself model. It shows a shot of a drab, dormitory-type room. In the center is a simple Ikea-branded cardboard box. In seconds, the box opens, filling the room with colorful Ikea furniture and transforming it into a cozy bedroom. 

YouTube once again showed growth during the second quarter, but so did search. Google Search delivered double-digit revenue growth. Other new features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, are performed well.

Consolidated Alphabet revenue in Q2 2025 rose 14% year-over-year to $96.4 billion, reflecting momentum across the business.

Strong demand for Google’s Cloud products and services is increasing the company’s investment in capital expenditures in 2025 to approximately $85 billion.

Google Cloud revenues increased 32% to $13.6 billion, led by growth in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across core GCP products, AI infrastructure, and generative AI solutions.

Google Services revenue overall rose 12% to $82.5 billion, reflecting strong performance across Google Search and other, Google subscriptions, platforms and devices, and YouTube ads.

Google Search features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode are also performing well.

Emarketer believes that in 2025 Google will continue to lead in the percentage of ad revenue share. Google will take 9% or  $208.34 billion in 2025, dropping to 8.5% or $226.12 billion in 2026.