{"id":906093,"date":"2026-05-15T09:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/15\/youtube-makes-more-ad-revenue-than-nbcu-disney-paramount-and-wbd-put-together-new-king-of-all-media\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T09:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:23:10","slug":"youtube-makes-more-ad-revenue-than-nbcu-disney-paramount-and-wbd-put-together-new-king-of-all-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/15\/youtube-makes-more-ad-revenue-than-nbcu-disney-paramount-and-wbd-put-together-new-king-of-all-media\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube Makes More Ad Revenue Than NBCU, Disney, Paramount and WBD Put Together: \u2018New King of All Media\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>YouTube is now the world\u2019s largest media company by ad revenue, surpassing Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/li>\n<li>YouTube generated more advertising revenue last year than its four biggest rivals combined.<\/li>\n<li>MoffettNathanson crowned YouTube the \u201cnew king of all media,\u201d and valued the company at $500-$560 billion, about $100 billion ahead of its nearest competitor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/youtube-updates-shorts-wants-creators-to-build-a-business\/476974\">YouTube<\/a> is coming for Hollywood\u2019s crown.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>YouTube\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/youtube-shorts-will-see-more-view-counts-earnings\/489190\">ad machine<\/a> has quietly become bigger than the combined streaming ad businesses of some of Hollywood\u2019s biggest names. YouTube created more advertising revenue last year than its four biggest rivals combined, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/youtube-ad-revenue-disney-nbc-paramount-wbd-warner-bros-streaming-2026-3\">Business Insider<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Google-owned video streaming service generated $40.4 billion in ad revenue for 2025, exceeding the $37.8 billion total from its four closest competitors: Disney, Comcast\u2019s NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. That makes YouTube not just the largest single video platform, but the world\u2019s largest media company by ad revenue, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/business\/digital\/youtube-worlds-largest-media-company-2025-tops-disney-1236525130\/\">The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Google-owned streaming giant increased its ad revenue from $36.1 billion in 2024. According to financial research firm <a href=\"https:\/\/www.todotvnews.com\/en\/moffettnathanson-youtube-is-now-the-worlds-largest-media-company\/\">MoffettNathanson<\/a>, in 2024, YouTube\u2019s total ad revenue fell short of the $41.8 billion total from Disney, NBCU, Paramount and WBD.<\/p>\n<p>YouTube retains nearly half of its ad revenue. Creators on the platform receive a 55% cut for ads on standard videos. YouTube has given creators, music companies and media partners more than $100 billion in payouts from 2021 to 2025, per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2025\/09\/16\/youtube-creators-pay.html\">CNBC<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>MoffettNathanson crowned YouTube the \u201cnew king of all media,\u201d and valued the company at $500 billion to $560 billion, far ahead of its competitors. The nearest rival would be Netflix, which has a market capitalization of <a href=\"https:\/\/companiesmarketcap.com\/netflix\/marketcap\/\">about $409 billion<\/a> at the time of writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a world filled with business model concerns, YouTube\u2019s global scale and innovative offerings create an uncommonly high moat,\u201d per MoffettNathanson\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-youtube-s-dominance-extends-to-tv-viewership-subscriptions\">YouTube\u2019s dominance extends to TV viewership, subscriptions<\/h2>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nielsen.com\/news-center\/2026\/tv-viewing-hits-12-month-high-in-nielsens-january-report-of-the-gauge\/\">Nielsen<\/a>, YouTube had more viewers on U.S. TVs in January than Disney, NBCU, Paramount and WBD put together.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>YouTube had a 12.5% share of TV viewers. The only paid streaming service that came close to challenging YouTube\u2019s dominance was Netflix, with 8.8% of the share of TV viewership.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>YouTube\u2019s subscription business is also massive, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/block-cto-and-ex-google-engineer-focus-on-one-thing-when\/498789\">YouTube Premium<\/a>, YouTube Music, NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV. YouTube TV has around 10 million subscribers, according to The Hollywood Reporter. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moffettnathanson.com\/\">MoffettNathanson<\/a> estimated that YouTube had 334 million global subscribers, including 143 million from YouTube Premium.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>MoffettNathanson predicted that YouTube would experience more subscription revenue growth than ad revenue growth in the coming years. The research firm still expects ad revenue to grow at a rate of about 10% over the next three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While YouTube may be the leader compared to Hollywood players, its ad revenue is still below that of tech giants like Meta, which had about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.exchange4media.com\/digital-news\/metas-ad-revenue-up-24-151457.html\">$196.2 billion<\/a> in ad revenue in 2025. YouTube\u2019s parent company, Alphabet, also made <a href=\"https:\/\/almcorp.com\/blog\/google-search-63-billion-ai-mode-advertising-q4-2025\/\">$63.07 billion<\/a> in the fourth quarter of 2025 from Google search ads alone.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>YouTube has an advantage that could pay off in the coming years. The social media giant is uniquely positioned to be \u201cone of the only\u201d media companies that \u201cwill become stronger in the age of AI,\u201d<strong> <\/strong>MoffettNathanson analysts wrote. YouTube could flourish in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/youtube-tests-ai-search-summaries-on-videos\/493934\">age of AI videos<\/a>, as users <a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/youtube-rolls-out-deepfake-detection-for-politicians\">upload new AI content<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>YouTube is now the world\u2019s largest media company by ad revenue, surpassing Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/li>\n<li>YouTube generated more advertising revenue last year than its four biggest rivals combined.<\/li>\n<li>MoffettNathanson crowned YouTube the \u201cnew king of all media,\u201d and valued the company at $500-$560 billion, about $100 billion ahead of its nearest competitor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/youtube-updates-shorts-wants-creators-to-build-a-business\/476974\">YouTube<\/a> is coming for Hollywood\u2019s crown.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>YouTube\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/youtube-shorts-will-see-more-view-counts-earnings\/489190\">ad machine<\/a> has quietly become bigger than the combined streaming ad businesses of some of Hollywood\u2019s biggest names. YouTube created more advertising revenue last year than its four biggest rivals combined, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/youtube-ad-revenue-disney-nbc-paramount-wbd-warner-bros-streaming-2026-3\">Business Insider<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Google-owned video streaming service generated $40.4 billion in ad revenue for 2025, exceeding the $37.8 billion total from its four closest competitors: Disney, Comcast\u2019s NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. That makes YouTube not just the largest single video platform, but the world\u2019s largest media company by ad revenue, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/business\/digital\/youtube-worlds-largest-media-company-2025-tops-disney-1236525130\/\">The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/business-news\/youtube-generates-more-ad-revenue-than-nbcu-disney-paramount-wbd\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Takeaways YouTube is now the world\u2019s largest media company by ad revenue, surpassing Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. YouTube generated more advertising revenue last year than its four biggest rivals combined. MoffettNathanson crowned YouTube the \u201cnew king of all media,\u201d and valued the company at $500-$560 billion, about $100 billion ahead [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":906094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[397,49,104640],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-906093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-makes","8":"category-youtube","9":"category-youtube-videos"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}