Alphabet has said YouTube's subscription business, encompassing YouTube Music and Premium, is growing faster than its advertising arm, with growth increasingly driven by living-room viewing on television screens. The comments, made by Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler during the company's Q2 2026 earnings call, echo remarks from the previous quarter and underline how subscription revenue is becoming an increasingly important pillar of YouTube's business alongside advertising.

YouTube's advertising revenue rose 13% year-on-year to $11.06 billion in Q2 2026, boosted by strong FIFA World Cup viewership, which Alphabet said drew over 1.7 billion unique viewers to World Cup-related content, more than 550 million of them on television. Alphabet's "Subscriptions, Platforms and Devices" segment, which includes YouTube subscriptions alongside Google One and the Play Store, grew 15% to $12.9 billion, with Google One's rise attributed partly to demand for AI plans. Alphabet did not disclose updated subscriber numbers this quarter, though it reported 350 million paid subscriptions across its services in Q1, and YouTube has recently raised its US subscription prices for the first time since 2023. Across the wider company, revenues climbed 24% year-on-year to $119.8 billion, marking a 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.