YouTube is poised to surpass Disney as the largest media company by revenue in 2025, according to research from Wall Street firm MoffettNathanson. 

The Google-owned video platform, which recently marked its 20th anniversary, is already the second-largest media company by revenue, with a revenue of $54.2 billion in 2024, trailing only Disney.

Principal analyst Michael Nathanson writes that YouTube is “making it not only the leader in engagement but revenue as well,” as it prepares to take the top spot ahead of Disney, excluding revenue from Disney’s theme parks and product segment.

YouTube Valuation and Market Position

If YouTube were a standalone business, MoffettNathanson estimates its worth between $475 billion and $550 billion, representing approximately 30% of Alphabet’s current valuation. This estimate is based on the firm’s analysis of enterprise value as a multiple of revenue in 2024 for comparable companies: Netflix (10.5x revenue), Meta (8.8x), Roku (2.4x), Warner Bros. Discovery (1.4x), Fox (1.3x), and Disney (1.3x).

In February 2025, according to Nielsen, YouTube ranked as the largest aggregate TV content source in the United States based on viewing time. This marks the second time in the past year that YouTube has surpassed traditional TV giants like Disney, Fox Corp., Paramount Global, WBD, and NBCUniversal, as well as subscription streaming leader Netflix.

Platform’s Viewership Growth

YouTube gained 2% over January to secure 11.6% of time spent watching TV in February 2025, according to Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge. This performance represents YouTube’s best TV share to date, with nearly 27% of all streaming time in February dedicated to YouTube viewing.

The platform is experiencing demographic shifts in its audience composition. While growth continues across all age groups, viewing from adults aged 65+ has nearly doubled over the past two years, increasing 96% since February 2023. The 65+ demographic now represents 15.4% of YouTube’s audience composition, approaching the contribution from the traditionally strong 2-11 age group at 16.9%.

Revenue Streams and Growth Potential

As per Google, YouTube generated a global ad revenue of $36.15 billion in 2024, up 15% from the previous year. For the 12 months ending September 2024, YouTube’s subscription revenue topped $15 billion. 

This revenue comes from YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Music Premium, with the company announcing that it now has more than 125 million subscribers for its Music and Premium services, up from 100 million a year ago.

MoffettNathanson expects YouTube’s subscription revenue growth to continue to outpace advertising, driven primarily by subscriber additions. The firm estimates that in 2024, YouTube generated $7.8 billion in operating income, with an operating margin of 14%. 

This year, the analyst projects operating income to grow to $10.2 billion with a 16% margin, reaching $13.8 billion by 2027 with an operating margin expanding to 18%.

Television Viewing Patterns

TV screens have overtaken other devices as the primary viewing medium for YouTube in the United States, according to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. “Viewers are watching, on average, over 1B hours of YouTube content on TVs daily,” Mohan stated in a blog post.

Streaming as a category has reached its largest share of TV viewership to date at 43.5%, narrowing the gap with traditional TV (broadcast and cable combined), which leads by less than a share point at 44.4%.

YouTube TV now has over 8 million subscribers, and Nathanson suggests that by the end of 2026, “as traditional pay-TV distributors continue to collapse, we believe that YouTube TV will emerge as the industry leader, which should help their economics in content negotiations while creating a pricing opportunity.”

According to Nathanson, YouTube has “substantial runway for further growth — not just in monetization but also in expanding into new business segments, such as becoming the premier streaming aggregator.” If executed effectively, this strategy “could further widen the gap between YouTube and the other media players.”