YouTube is pulling away as the leading media distributor in the United States. After six consecutive months in the lead in the ranking of distributors, with 13.4% of total television usage in July 2025, up from 12.8% the previous month, YouTube has established the largest lead since Nielsen began its Media Distributor Gauge in late 2023.
Some may argue whether YouTube is television, but the Nielsen ranking suggests that it has a significant lead as media distributor on television screens. Its share is up 2.5 percentage points from 10.8% at the start of 2025.
The Walt Disney Company comes second with a 9.4% share of viewing across its portfolio, down from 10.0% the previous month, still ahead of Netflix, that had 8.8%, up from 8.3%.
Disney online video accounted for 4.7% of total viewing, meaning that it contributed about half of television viewing for The Walt Disney Company.
Online video accounted for 47.3% of total television viewing in the United States in July 2025, nudging towards half of the total, up from 46% the previous month, and up from 41.4% in July 2024.
That increase, of course, has been at the expense of traditional broadcast and subscription television, which together made up just over 40% of viewing.
Netflix had the most viewed title with 5.4 billion viewing minutes with Squid Game, just ahead of Love Island USA on Peacock, from the NBCUniversal division of Comcast.
The dominance of YouTube is not limited to the United States. In the United Kingdom, Barb research shows that YouTube accounted for 14% of total video viewing in 2024, as viewed on television sets and other devices using the home network, across all individuals aged over 4 years old.
That made it the second most popular service, after the BBC, but ahead of ITV. Netflix, with 8%, was in front of Channel 4. Sky, and Channel 5.