Alphabet reported that YouTube advertising revenue surpassed $11 billion in the second quarter of 2026, a 13 per cent rise on the same period last year, though this was overshadowed by even stronger performance elsewhere in the business. The results underline how Google's advertising and cloud operations, increasingly powered by artificial intelligence, continue to drive the company's growth and comfortably beat Wall Street's expectations.

Across the whole of Alphabet, revenue rose 24 per cent year-on-year to $120 billion, with total advertising revenue (spanning Search, YouTube and Google Network) reaching $81.6 billion, of which Google Search alone contributed $63.3 billion. Subscriptions added $12.9 billion and cloud services almost $25 billion, helping push quarterly profit above $112 billion, or $9.11 per share. CEO Sundar Pichai credited the results largely to AI investment, citing 82 per cent growth in Google Cloud revenue, near-universal Fortune 100 adoption of Gemini Enterprise, 950 million monthly users of the Gemini app, and 1.7 billion unique viewers watching FIFA World Cup 2026 content on YouTube.