YouTube’s advertising business was worth $9.88 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up 10.7 percent year over year, but slightly below Wall Street expectations.
Google services revenue rose 16% to $89.6 billion, driven by 19% growth in Google Search and more, 19% growth in Google subscriptions, platforms and devices, and 11% growth in YouTube Ads.
On the earnings call, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, said viewers watch more than 200 million hours of YouTube content daily. As of March, YouTube now has more than 10 million channels now posting short videos daily. Momentum is also growing in subscriptions, with YouTube Music and Premium in Q1 seeing the largest quarterly increase in total non-trial subscribers since YouTube Premium launched in June 2018.
Overall, paid subscribers across YouTube Premium as well as Google One, Alphabet’s storage business, reached 340 million, up from 325 million in the previous quarter.
Alphabet reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $109.9 billion, up 22 percent year-over-year and net income of $62.6 billion. Both came in above analysts’ expectations.
“2026 is off to a great start. Our AI investments and full-stack approach light up every part of the business. Search had a strong quarter as AI experiments drove usage and inquiries at an all-time high and revenue grew 19%. Google Cloud revenue grew 63% with backlog nearly doubling QoQ to over $460 billion. This was the strongest quarter ever for our consumer AI plans, driven by Gemini. Overall, paid subscriptions now reach 350 “YouTube and Google One are the main drivers,” Pichai said.
