YouTube has come a long way from inviting users to “Broadcast Yourself” in grainy videos. Now it’s one of the world’s biggest media platforms.
The video-streaming service entered the scene in 2005 with these simple words from co-founder Jawed Karim: “All right, so here we are in front of the elephants. The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks, and that’s cool. And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”
The 19-second “Me at the Zoo” clip has drawn 348 million views and counting since become the first video ever uploaded to YouTube.
As YouTube marks its 20th anniversary on Friday, it has become one of the most-used apps in the world, with people now turning to the platform to watch live TV, tune into podcasts and listen to music.
Here are some key fundamentals that help tell YouTube’s story — and a look at what could come next.
Ad revenue over the years
YouTube’s advertising revenue has been steadily increasing in recent years, jumping 14.6% between 2023 and 2024 alone. Last year the estimated revenue for its advertising business hit a record $36.1 billion, up from $31.5 billion the year before.
The video platform’s ad revenue has in fact more than quadrupled over the last nine years, and analysts have estimated that it will balloon to $64.2 billion by 2030.
And that doesn’t include the additional money YouTube makes from other parts of its business, like subscriptions, which its parent company, Alphabet Inc. — which bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 — doesn’t carve out separately. These subscriptions include YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, two popular services that let users watch ad-free videos and listen to music without commercial interruptions.
YouTube says more than 100 million subscribers have bought into those services. And while there are a few different bundle options and subscription tiers, the most basic plan is $11 a month for YouTube Music, which would indicate a minimum of $10 billion in revenue that could be added to its 2024 ad-revenue total.
2024 revenue across media platforms
Making a complete list of YouTube’s rivals gets complicated because it has become competitive in a variety of fields, including streaming, social media, TV, music and podcasts. So competitors these days could include video streamers like Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu. But YouTube is also competing against podcast players like Spotify, and its growing body of short-form video content rivals that of social-media platforms like TikTok or Meta’s Instagram Reels.
YouTube’s advertising revenue is just shy of what Netflix reported for its entire business last year and about double what Spotify posted.
Hours watched vs. other streamers
According to Nielsen’s The Gauge, 43.3% of all December TV watching was done via streaming — more than broadcast TV or cable. And in the streaming category, YouTube was the most-streamed platform on people’s televisions. Again, that’s not the complete picture — it only accounts for the time people spent viewing YouTube content on TV, not on computers or mobile devices.
Here’s how TV watch time in the streaming category was broken down by service:
- YouTube: 11.1%
- Netflix: 8.5%
- Prime Video: 4.0%
- Hulu: 2.5%
- Disney+: 2.1%
- Roku: 2%
- Tubi: 1.7%
- Peacock: 1.6%
- Paramount+: 1.4%
- Max: 1.2%
- Pluto: 0.9%
- Other streaming: 6.3%
Despite going against platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix, both of which hosted NFL games in December, YouTube still had its most promising month ever.
And in a recent announcement, YouTube’s CEO bragged that his company has officially overtaken the TV.
“For more and more people, watching TV means watching YouTube. Viewers are watching, on average, over 1 billion hours of YouTube content on TVs daily, and TV is now the primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S.,” Chief Executive Neal Mohan said in a blog post.
Mohan argued that watching YouTube on a TV screen is even better than traditional TV or streaming because of its interactive nature.
“We’re bringing the best of YouTube to TVs, including a second screen experience that lets you use your phone to interact with the video you’re watching on TV — for example, to leave a comment or make a purchase,” he said.
In addition to having top-tier technology — which includes integration into Android devices — industry analysts say that YouTube’s content also helps set it apart.
“YouTube best represents the spectrum of entertainment with every single niche interest and blockbuster programming genre available,” Brandon Katz, senior entertainment industry strategist at Parrot Analytics, told MarketWatch. “At the end of the day, YouTube’s longer-form content is a natural viewing option for TV sets and can fill pretty much every viewer’s need thanks to its endless library.”
YouTube’s user-generated content model is far more cost-effective, too, he said.
“Traditional Hollywood programmers spend $140 billion-plus per year for professionally developed content,” Katz noted. “To compare, from June 2019 to June 2022, YouTube paid creators, artists and media companies just $50 billion total.”
Monthly users
Hundreds of millions — in some cases billions — of people use YouTube and other social platforms each month.
“YouTube is the envy of every major media company, as the platform has become a one-stop shop for a diverse array of needs,” Katz told MarketWatch.
The social-media platform with the most global users is Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta does not break down active users by platform in its earnings reports, however, and uses daily users instead of monthly users in its classification, making it difficult to compare its audience directly with YouTube’s. For December 2024, average daily users across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp hit a collective 3.35 billion.
YouTube, meanwhile, has an estimated 2.7 billion monthly active users, up from 1.2 billion monthly active users 10 years ago, according to data from GlobalMediaInsight.
Representatives from YouTube, Snap, Meta, Spotify and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.
YouTube’s podcast dominance
This may come as a surprise, but people are listening to more podcasts on YouTube than they are on the audio-streaming service Spotify.
According to data from Edison Research cited by YouTube, 31% of weekly podcast listeners ages 13 and up said YouTube is the platform they use most for podcasts, ahead of Spotify (27%) and Apple Podcasts (15%). This has put YouTube at the “epicenter of culture,” the company said in its 20th-anniversary announcement.
“We’ve long invested in the podcast experience and creators have found that video makes this format even more compelling,” Mohan said, citing popular shows like “The Joe Rogan Experience,” whose interview with Donald Trump before the presidential election had 55 million views on YouTube.
YouTube has become the most frequently used service for listening to podcasts in the U.S., more than audio platforms like Apple’s podcast app or Spotify.
Now read: What’s worth streaming on Netflix, Max, Hulu and more in February 2025 — and which subscriptions to stop
So what’s next for YouTube? What other industry could it take over?
YouTube says it’s experimenting with a new feature for 2025 that it calls “Watch With” that lets creators give live commentary for events like sports games and awards shows.
Retail could provide another opportunity, even if YouTube is focusing more on TV right now.
“YouTube is still definitely focused on being the go-to TV replacement for current and future generations,” Katz said. “Across its diverse product suite, the platform has a number of ways to monetize users. But it still doesn’t have a robust retail-sales or product-sales focus similar to Amazon and Apple. Does it make sense to push more into those directions? Probably not. But further integrating shoppable TV can create more of a commerce-driven ecosystem on YouTube.”
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