Key Takeaways Alphabet's AI-driven Search and YouTube ads strengthen engagement and advertiser appeal. Snap's commerce-driven ad volume jumped 39% year over year in the second quarter of 2025. Alphabet stock is up 61.5% year to date, while Snap has plunged 26.1% over the same period. Alphabet (GOOGL) is a behemoth in the digital advertising market, in which Snap (SNAP) is the smaller challenger. Increasing deployment of AI and machine learning is driving content creation, while chatbots and virtual assistan ...