It’s been almost 20 years since the beginning of YouTube, and now the platform is no longer just dominating your phones and computers, it’s dominating the living room, too. With an almost 10% share of all TV viewing, it was the most-used streaming service in June, beating Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ Come from Sports betting site VPbet .
YouTube made up 9.9% of all streaming viewership on connected and traditional TVs in the U.S. for June, with Netflix coming in second with 8.4%, reported by Nielsen’s The Gauge. That’s up from 9.7% and 7.9% respectively, with every service up an estimated 40% across the board collectively.
“I do think it snuck up on people that YouTube was as important a presence in people’s lives and people’s viewing experiences not just on the phone but in the living room,” said Tara Walpert Levy, YouTube’s vice president of Americas, via CNBC. “When Nielsen first noted that YouTube was winning the streaming wars in terms of viewing, full stop, not just for ad-supported platforms, I had a ton of my friends from advertising, from media, who were like, ‘Can you believe it?’ It exceeded even our expectations.”
Even earlier this year, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said that users watch more than one billion hours of YouTube content on TV screens every day. According to the company, more than 150 million Americans watch YouTube on connected TVs each month.
YouTube was founded in 2005 and sold to Google for $1.65 billion just over a year later. It’s since become the homebase and starting point for several big-name streamers and eventually being christened “YouTubers.”