Google's second-quarter ad revenue grew 14% year over year to USD 81.6 billion, with AI-powered features bolstering marketing performance, according to parent company Alphabet.
The numbers
| Measure | Q2 |
|---|
| Google ad revenue | USD 81.6B (+14% YoY) |
| Search and other revenue | USD 63.3B (+~17% YoY) |
| Alphabet total revenue | USD 119.8B (+24% YoY, above expectations) |
| Unique global viewers of World Cup content on YouTube | 1.7 billion |
| Top range of 2026 capex expectations | USD 205B |
Executives said Gemini AI is delivering increased relevance to users and greater value to advertisers in search, the company's largest business segment.
"AI is additive to search"
Emarketer principal analyst Nate Elliott assessed the results by email: the gains back up "Google's claim that AI is additive to search, not a replacement."
The precision Gemini provides is also advancing Google's bets on commerce-enabled shopping campaigns, which saw a 20% improvement in delivering highly relevant ads.
"It's really important to understand that Gemini supercharges our ability … to understand what people are looking for and match the right ads." — Philipp Schindler, Google Chief Business Officer
YouTube and the World Cup
YouTube also posted a strong quarter. The standout figure: 1.7 billion unique global viewers of World Cup-related content.
It shows the scale at which sporting events are absorbed into YouTube — and how much inventory exists for brands that never bought broadcast rights.
What advertisers should read
- Search advertising did not shrink — zero-click concern and actual revenue move separately, though the character of the clicks advertisers receive is changing
- A 20% relevance improvement affects bid strategy — better matching lowers the waste rate of broad matching
- 1.7 billion is a planning baseline for event marketing — there is inventory adjacent to the event without rights