---
type: source
title: "YouTube's 2025 Ad Revenue ($40.4B) Surpasses Disney, NBCU, Paramount and WBD Combined"
author: "TechCrunch / Dataconomy"
url: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/10/youtube-surpasses-disney-paramount-wbd-in-2025-ad-revenue/
date: 2026-03-10
domain: entertainment
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
processed_by: clay
processed_date: 2026-04-24
priority: high
tags: [creator-economy, youtube, ad-revenue, media-disruption, corporate-media, crossover-milestone]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

YouTube generated $40.4 billion in ad revenue in 2025, surpassing the combined ad revenue of Disney, NBCU, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery ($37.8 billion). This marks a crossover milestone — in 2024, YouTube's $36.1B was lower than the studios' collective $41.8B. YouTube's total revenue in 2025 was $60 billion. YouTube has paid out over $100 billion to creators, music companies, and media partners.

Context: Media consumption is NOT stagnant. Total daily media time is approaching 13 hours, with digital media growing to ~8 hours/day. Daily time with digital video increasing by 15 minutes in 2026. Overall media consumption grew again in 2025 despite predicted downturn (The Drum). The total advertising pie is expanding alongside creator platform dominance.

YouTube's dominance contrasts with declining traditional media: combined studio content spend dropped $18B in 2023, 17,000+ entertainment jobs eliminated in 2025.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is a decade-early confirmation of my position "creator media economy will exceed corporate media revenue by 2035." YouTube alone exceeded ALL four major studios' ad revenue combined in 2025 — the crossover happened, just in ad revenue first. The 2035 timeline may need to be revised forward, or the position may need a milestone update.

**What surprised me:** The crossover happened in 2025 — one year, not ten years, after YouTube was still $5.7B BELOW the studios combined. The reversal was sudden: $36.1B vs $41.8B (2024) → $40.4B vs $37.8B (2025). A $10B swing in one year.

**What I expected but didn't find:** I expected this to be a 2028-2030 story. The speed of the reversal challenges my calibration on timing.

**KB connections:**
- [[creator and corporate media economies are zero-sum because total media time is stagnant and every marginal hour shifts between them]] — this data CONTRADICTS the "zero-sum/stagnant" framing. Total media time is growing AND YouTube captured revenue growth that was additive, not just extractive. The zero-sum framing is wrong or needs significant qualification.
- [[social video is already 25 percent of all video consumption and growing because dopamine-optimized formats match generational attention patterns]] — confirms and extends
- [[the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership]] — the ad revenue crossover is the financial confirmation

**Extraction hints:**
- New claim candidate: "YouTube's ad revenue crossed the combined total of major Hollywood studios in 2025 — the creator economy platform crossover happened a decade ahead of industry projections"
- Update to existing position: "creator media economy will exceed corporate media revenue by 2035" needs milestone update — ad revenue milestone already crossed in 2025
- Possible challenge to "zero-sum" claim: total media time is growing (13 hours/day), not stagnant

**Context:** TechCrunch reported March 10, 2026 citing full-year 2025 earnings. Multiple outlets confirmed: Dataconomy, MediaPost, IndexBox, AnalyticsInsight, ComingSoon, Yahoo Finance. Entrepreneur headline: "YouTube Makes More Ad Revenue Than NBCU, Disney, Paramount and WBD Put Together: 'New King of All Media'".

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[creator and corporate media economies are zero-sum because total media time is stagnant and every marginal hour shifts between them]] — this data directly challenges the "stagnant" claim

WHY ARCHIVED: The creator platform ad revenue crossover is the financial milestone that proves the structural shift has already happened. Also provides direct data to revisit the zero-sum claim.

EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on (1) the specific timing — 2025, not 2030s, (2) the speed of reversal ($10B swing in one year), (3) the media time growth data that undermines the zero-sum framing, and (4) implications for the 2035 position timeline.
