YouTube Tops TV Usage for the First Time
By Movieguide® Contributor
YouTube was the top TV content distributor in July, dethroning Disney for the first time since Nielsen began tracking this data.
YouTube accounted for 10.4% of all TV usage in July, becoming the first streamer to break the double-digit mark. Its 0.5% jump is largely attributed to kids who were home on summer vacation.
Since Nielsen launched its new metric, combining streaming data with cable and broadcast to reveal legacy companies’ total TV distribution, Disney has remained at the top thanks to strong streamers — Disney+ and Hulu — and numerous popular cable offerings. While Disney’s total TV usage has remained relatively steady since November of last year, YouTube has seen significant growth, rising from 9% to where it is today.
YouTube’s dominance also helped boost streaming’s overall TV usage to an all-time high, accounting for 41.4% of all TV usage during the month. Its percentage would have been markedly higher had the Olympics not caught the last three days of the month. The Games accounted for the top five and seven of the top 10 broadcasts in July, with peak viewership coming on July 28 when 19 million homes tuned into NBC.
While YouTube sits at the top of Nielsen’s metric, the data fails to capture just how popular the platform is as it only focuses on TV and doesn’t include desktop and phone usage. Nonetheless, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan revealed in May that the website averages over 1 billion hours of content streamed to TVs every day.
YouTube’s dominance has begun to have an impact on its competitors. While the platform serves as one of the most powerful places to advertise, its reach has eaten into many other streamers’ bottom lines. This is especially true within children’s content, which saw two streamers close their doors earlier this year.
“Some media executives see YouTube as a companion platform to subscriber streaming services and cable TV — an unwieldy behemoth of non-narrative, creator-led content with a social media slant that doesn’t really fit the New York-Hollywood nexus of professional media,” CNBC reported in June. “Others — even at times the same executives — view YouTube as an existential threat to the entertainment industry, stealing viewership from subscription streaming services and, with it, the cultural center of American youth.”
“I do think it snuck up on people that YouTube was as important a presence in people’s lives and people’s viewing experiences not just on the phone but in the living room,” added YouTube’s vice president of Americas, Tara Walpert Levy.
Movieguide® previously reported:
YouTube continues to dominate streaming, a title it’s held for over a year and a half, causing other players in the industry to view it as both a friend and a foe.
Nielsen’s May 2024 TV usage report revealed that YouTube accounted for 9.7% of all TV usage that month, handily beating out Netflix’s second place 7.6% of TV usage, which was more than double that of any other platform. This marked nearly a year and a halfof holding the crown just above Netflix’s head.
While YouTube isn’t typically thought of as a streaming service, its dominance in the TV space puts it at odds with traditional media, causing streaming platforms to consider it when creating their long-term strategies.
Disney, for example, has turned to YouTube’s massive audience to promote its content, particularly children’s content, posting clips from upcoming shows to generate hype. While it has yet to do so, it has also considered posting full episodes of shows from Hulu and Disney+ onto YouTube to entice viewers to subscribe to its platforms.
