YouTube ads grew 9% to $11.2 billion as Music and Premium passed 150 million subscribers, including trials

YouTube's advertising revenue rose 9.2% from a year earlier to $11.21 billion in the third quarter of 2026, the three months to September 30, its parent company Alphabet said on October 28. Growth slowed from 12.9% in the second quarter, when YouTube ads brought in $11.06 billion. In the same release, Alphabet's chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said YouTube Music and Premium had passed 150 million subscribers worldwide, a figure that includes trials.

we surpassed 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers globally, including trials.

The ad figure covers only advertising on YouTube's own properties. Money from YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV and NFL Sunday Ticket is booked in a separate line, Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices, alongside the Google One plan, Google Play app sales and Pixel phones. So Alphabet's quarterly release and filing give no figure for YouTube's total revenue.

Five quarters of YouTube ad sales

In its quarterly report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed on October 29, Alphabet said the $946 million increase came mainly from brand advertising, followed by direct response advertising, "both of which benefited from increased spending by our advertisers." Over the first nine months of 2026, YouTube ads revenue reached $32.1 billion, up 10.9% on the same period of 2025.

YouTube ads made up about 8.8% of Alphabet's $127.6 billion in third-quarter revenue (our calculation). The group's revenue grew 25%, led by Google Cloud, whose revenue rose 103% to $30.7 billion.

Subscribers and the cost of content

The 150 million figure compares with the more than 125 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, also including trials, that Google announced on March 6, 2025. That is a rise of about 25 million, or 20%, in under 20 months (our calculation). Neither count splits paying members from trial users, or YouTube Music Premium from YouTube Premium, the plan that also removes ads from YouTube videos.

The line that holds those subscriptions grew 11.0% to $14.29 billion in the quarter. Alphabet's filing says subscription growth came mainly from more paid subscriptions to YouTube services and Google One, while device revenue rose on Pixel sales. It also lists content acquisition costs, "largely for YouTube," among the reasons its cost of revenues rose 24% to $51.4 billion. Those are payments to the providers whose videos and other content Alphabet licenses, mostly for YouTube.

In February, when it reported full-year 2025 results, Alphabet said YouTube's annual revenue across ads and subscriptions had passed $60 billion, and that it had more than 325 million paid subscriptions across its consumer services, led by Google One and YouTube Premium.

How it compares

Spotify reported 306 million Premium subscribers on October 22, up 9% on a year earlier (our report). The two numbers are not directly comparable: YouTube's includes trials and combines a music plan with an ad-free video plan.

On television sets in the United States, YouTube already leads Nielsen's ranking of media distributors. Nielsen said on October 22 that YouTube took a platform-record 15.8% of TV viewing in August (our report). Alphabet's third-quarter figures show YouTube's advertising revenue still growing worldwide, though more slowly than in the second quarter.