YouTube overtakes Netflix in average daily viewing around the world
YouTube Just Overtook Netflix in Daily Viewing. Here's What It Actually Means for Your Strategy
New data from UK analytics firm Digital i confirms something most people in video already suspected: YouTube now beats Netflix on average daily viewing time, globally. Average daily usage per YouTube account climbed from 87.2 minutes in 2024 to 99.1 minutes in 2025. Netflix went the other way, dropping from 100.5 minutes to 93.4 minutes over the same period.
Even Netflix's own co-CEO Ted Sarandos put it plainly: "YouTube is not just cat videos any more. YouTube is TV."
Good soundbite. Not a reason to touch your Q3 or Q4 budget yet. Here's what's actually in the data, and where the headline gets ahead of it.
The headline number is softer than it looks
"YouTube overtook Netflix" holds up at the global average level, across the 20 markets Digital i tracked. But in the UK specifically, one of the most mature markets in the world, Netflix is still ahead: 88.2 minutes to YouTube's 84.8. The gap narrowed. It didn't close. If your business leans UK heavy, don't rewrite your strategy off a global number that doesn't describe your actual market.
Average minutes per account is also a different thing from reach or attention quality. Rising minutes is a real signal about where people are spending their time. It's not automatically proof that YouTube is now "worth more" than Netflix for whatever you're trying to achieve.
What's actually driving the growth
The most useful part of this data isn't the Netflix comparison. It's the shift underneath it. People are moving their YouTube viewing onto the television screen. TV made up 28% of YouTube watch time in January 2024 and 35% by December 2025, while mobile viewing dropped from 35% to 31%.
That's a meaningful behaviour change, not a small one. People aren't just scrolling YouTube on a break anymore. They're sitting down and watching it the way they'd watch any other channel, often as a deliberate choice over Netflix or live TV. That's a different kind of attention than YouTube has historically captured, and it's the real engine behind the growth in overall minutes.
Who's actually driving the growth might surprise you
Gen Z is still the most engaged group, averaging 111 minutes a day, which isn't shocking. But the fastest growing segment was men aged 55 to 64, up 15% year on year, alongside steady growth among women across every age group. South Korea had the highest daily usage of any market at 161.5 minutes. France had the fastest growth, up a third.
If your brand still treats YouTube as a young person's platform, this data says that's outdated. The audience is broadening into older demographics and into markets like France where growth is exploding. That's a real opportunity for brands who've been under indexing on YouTube because they assumed it skewed too young for their customer base. It probably doesn't anymore, and the gap between that assumption and reality is where competitors are going to move first.
Netflix isn't sitting still, and that matters for creators too
Netflix's response is worth paying attention to. It's leaning hard into video podcasts, a format YouTube basically built and still owns. Its deal with The Rest Is Football, featuring Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, to run a daily World Cup edition is a direct bet that long form, personality driven talk content can also work inside a subscription wall.
For creators, that cuts both ways. It validates the format plenty of you have already built an audience around. It also means premium platforms are now actively courting the exact creator archetype that grew up on YouTube, often with better guaranteed money than they'd get otherwise. If you're in the talk, panel, or podcast lane, expect more of these offers to land in your inbox. Go in knowing you already have leverage. You didn't need Netflix to build your audience, so any deal should add to what you have, not replace the platform where you actually own the relationship with your viewers.
One more thing worth knowing: Netflix's own official YouTube channel had the highest reach of any channel on the platform in 2025, pulling in 78.2 million unique accounts. Netflix isn't retreating from YouTube. It's using YouTube to feed its own subscriptions while competing with it for people's time. Not a contradiction, but a reminder that "YouTube versus Netflix" is a messier rivalry than the headline makes it sound.
Where the opportunity actually is for brands
The living room shift means YouTube is now capturing attention in the same setting brands have historically paid a premium for through TV. That's an opening. Budgets that have stayed anchored to traditional TV because "that's where people sit down to watch" no longer have that assumption to lean on.
The demographic broadening is the second opening. If your customer base skews older, or if you've been treating YouTube as secondary to other channels in markets outside the usual suspects, this is the moment to check that assumption against current data rather than last year's media plan.
None of this means abandoning Netflix or traditional TV. It means the case for treating YouTube as a top tier channel, not a supporting one, is stronger than it was a year ago. The brands that move on that early will have an easier time than the ones who wait for the trend to become obvious to everyone else.
The data is real and the direction is right. Just don't let the "YouTube beat Netflix" headline do more work than the numbers underneath it actually support.
