Key Points
- TikTok will surpass YouTube in global advertising revenue by 2030 as marketers direct more spending toward social commerce and performance advertising, according to projections from WARC Media.
- YouTube generated $40.4 billion in advertising revenue during 2025, but its annual growth rate slowed to 11.7 percent.
- TikTok has gained an advantage in convincing marketers that its platform can generate purchases and other lower-funnel results.
While YouTube is spending time convincing the industry that its platform is akin to traditional forms of television, a new report from WARC Media says the service is facing stronger competition in the advertising space from social platform TikTok.
TikTok is on track to surpass YouTube in global advertising revenue by 2030 as marketers increase spending on social commerce and performance campaigns, WARC revealed on Thursday. The projection comes as YouTube’s advertising business has started to level off in recent financial quarters after a period of explosive growth.
WARC estimates the Google-owned video platform generated $40.4 billion in advertising revenue during 2025, an increase of 11.7 percent from the prior year but down from its growth of 14.7 percent one year earlier. YouTube advertising revenue is projected by WARC to increase 7 percent this year to $43.2 billion, followed by growth of 7.9 percent to $46.6 billion in 2027.
Total YouTube revenue, including subscriptions to YouTube Premium, exceeded $60 billion for the first time in 2025. The business generated around 10 percent of all income for parent company Alphabet, which operates YouTube through its Google subsidiary.
YouTube’s decelerating growth partly reflects the maturity of a platform that already reaches approximately 2.6 billion users each month. The company is also facing stronger competition from TikTok for performance advertising budgets and from Netflix for television-oriented brand spending.
Alex Brownsell, the Head of Content at WARC Media, said YouTube has not been as successful as TikTok in convincing marketers that advertising on its platform generates purchases and other lower-funnel outcomes.
“Rising consumption of video content on YouTube, and in particular on TV screens, has not yet translated into the kind of year-on-year ad revenue growth we see elsewhere in the digital ad market,” Brownsell said in a statement. “YouTube has been less successful than rivals such as TikTok in its attempts to persuade marketers of its role in driving lower-funnel outcomes, hence its growing focus on winning a greater share of TV budgets.”
That difference has become increasingly important as brands shift spending toward platforms that combine video consumption, product discovery and direct commerce. WARC said TikTok’s faster advertising growth could carry it past YouTube before the end of the decade.
YouTube remains a major component of global media plans. Research cited by WARC found marketers continue to rank the service as their most preferred and trusted advertising platform. It also ranked second in brand safety behind Netflix.
The company is increasingly seeking a larger share of television advertising as viewing moves to connected devices. Connected televisions now account for 45 percent of YouTube watch time in the United States, with average sessions lasting more than 45 minutes.
YouTube Shorts is another major source of growth, generating more than 200 billion daily views worldwide. In several markets, including the United States, revenue per watch hour for Shorts has surpassed that of traditional in-stream video.
WARC said younger users are particularly responsive to the format. Fifty-one (51) percent of men and 43 percent of women in the “Generation Z” demographic — those born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s — reported making a purchase after seeing an advertisement on YouTube Shorts.
Despite those strengths, TikTok’s position in social commerce and performance marketing is expected to produce faster advertising growth, potentially reshaping the competitive order of the global video advertising market as the current decade heads for a close.
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