Digital i: YouTube overtakes Netflix in average daily viewing globally, rising from 87.2 minutes in 2024 to 99.1 in 2025, while Netflix fell from 100.5 to 93.4
Analysts say Alphabet-owned platform's evolution is one of the defining media shifts of the decade
Context & Ripple Effects
YouTube’s lead has been building through successive viewing surfaces: its watch time was already growing rapidly on mobile in 2015, while by 2024 it said TV screens accounted for more than a billion daily viewing hours globally. Nielsen also placed YouTube ahead of Netflix in US viewing share in May 2024.
The current comparison extends that arc from US connected-TV share and platform-reported TV usage to global daily viewing. It matters because the competition is increasingly for total screen time, not just for subscription-video sessions.
First-order effects
- YouTube becomes the larger of the two platforms by average daily global viewing in the reported period, strengthening its position with viewers and creators across both short- and long-form video.
- Netflix faces a weaker relative engagement comparison even as it reported year-over-year revenue growth; its decision to provide fewer engagement updates from 2027 may make external comparisons harder to track.
Second-order effects
- Netflix’s push into adjacent experiences, including its Ready Player Me acquisition and cross-game personas, gains strategic importance as it seeks ways to deepen subscriber participation beyond conventional viewing.
- The result raises pressure on streaming services to compete for television-screen time against a platform that combines creator video, podcasts, sports content, and traditional long-form viewing.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern persists, the video market will be defined less by a clean divide between user-generated platforms and premium streaming services, and more by competition among multi-format attention ecosystems.
- Measurement will become a more consequential competitive issue: comparable viewing metrics can shape perceptions of leadership, while less frequent disclosure by major services could reduce transparency.
The trend: Video competition is converging around total, cross-screen attention, with creator-led platforms increasingly challenging subscription streamers on the television set as well as on mobile.