YouTube continues to expand its lead over every rival in American television viewing, with its latest share figures setting a new record high for the platform.
Nielsen’s most recent monthly Gauge report shows YouTube captured 14.2% of all U.S. TV viewing in July, the highest share the platform has ever recorded in the measurement.
Netflix (NFLX), the second-largest streaming service by viewership, held 7.8% of U.S. TV time during the same period, leaving a gap of 6.4 percentage points between the two platforms.
Just one year earlier, that gap was considerably narrower, with YouTube at 13.4% and Netflix posting what was then a platform record of 8.8% in July 2025.
Over the course of 12 months, YouTube’s lead widened from 4.6 percentage points to 6.4, while Netflix’s own share of TV time fell by more than a tenth.
Netflix’s stock performance has reflected some of that pressure, with shares trading near $68, approximately 4% above their 52-week low and roughly 46% below their 52-week high of $124.86.
Despite the viewership gap, Netflix operates on a fundamentally different business model than YouTube, generating revenue through subscriptions and advertising rather than raw viewing hours alone.
Netflix members watched over 97 billion hours of content worldwide in the first half of 2026, a figure that represents a 2% increase from the same period a year earlier.
The global growth rate suggests Netflix’s challenge is less about audiences abandoning the platform and more about YouTube expanding at a significantly faster pace.
Co-CEO Greg Peters addressed the viewership comparison directly on Netflix’s second-quarter earnings call, pushing back against treating hours as the primary performance metric for the business.
“There is not a linear relationship between view hours and revenue and profit because all hours are not created equal,” Peters said, signaling that management sees its financial model as insulated from raw viewership comparisons.
Streaming overall continued to grow during the same period, climbing to 49% of all U.S. TV time in July, according to Nielsen, with YouTube’s viewing rising 6% from June alone.
The broader streaming market expansion means multiple platforms can grow simultaneously, though YouTube’s acceleration has clearly outpaced the rest of the field by a significant margin.
