NEW YORK—YouTube hit record share of monthly TV viewing in February and had the largest share of TV viewing by the major media companies, according to Nielsen’s February 2025 Media Distributor Gauge, which ranks media companies by the combined share of TV viewing their various networks and outlets achieve.
In February YouTube gained two share points over January to capture 11.6% of time spent watching TV across the month. This marks YouTube’s best share of TV to date, and is the second time the pure-play streamer has topped the Media Distributor Gauge since Nielsen began tracking in November 2023.
Disney came in second with 10%, followed by Fox, which moved up to the third spot for the first time with 8.3% on the strength of Super Bowl Viewing. Netflix was tied for fourth with Paramount at 8.2%, followed by NBCU (8.1%), Warner Bros. Discovery (6.1%) and Amazon (3.5%).
Nielsen reported that YouTube has exhibited steady usage increases for some time. A longer-term look at the platform’s growth illustrates that time spent watching YouTube on television is up 53% versus two years ago in February 2023, and its share of TV has grown from 7.9% to 11.6% in that time, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge™ reports.
Interestingly, the data also showed that the overall viewing bump has been increasingly driven by older audiences. YouTube viewing from adults aged 65+ has nearly doubled in the last two years (+96%), and the demographic now represents a viewing contribution similar to that from kids 2-11 (15.4% vs. 16.9%).
Fox-owned entities gained 5% in February on the strength of a successful multi-platform Super Bowl, in addition to a 3% bump in Fox News Channel viewership, which drove 37% of the company’s total viewing. Fox Sports 1 viewership was also up 45% compared with January, primarily attributable to NASCAR events. Overall, Fox achieved an 8.3% share of TV usage in February and climbed from sixth to third in the rankings to notch its highest placement to date in the Media Distributor Gauge.
Following its best monthly performance to date in the Media Distributor Gauge, which was driven by NFL games and the College Football Playoffs, Disney lost two share points in February. This impact dropped them out of the top slot for only the third time since the inception of the Media Distributor Gauge, the researchers noted.
