YouTube leads streaming viewership: Nielsen

YouTube — owned by tech giant Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) — is solidifying its position as a dominant force in the streaming sector, according to the latest Nielsen survey. Nielsen's data reveals that YouTube captured a substantial 9.7% of total viewership among streaming services during the month of May.

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal breaks down the details.

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This post was written by Angel Smith

Video transcript

Let's turn now to the streaming space, youtube dominating its competitors, making up almost 10% of all viewership on connected and traditional TV.

S in the US in May.

That's according to the latest numbers out from Nielsen Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal joining us now with the latest on that and Ali, it's pretty impressive, almost 10% there of overall viewership all be all driven by uh youtube it looks like.

Yeah.

So youtube, not only uh taking over your computer screens, but also your living room, television screens as well.

And I wanna reiterate that that 9.7% of overall viewership on connected and traditional TV S in the US for the month of May.

Now, this is the largest share of TV for streaming platform ever reported by Nielsen.

And the difference between 1st and 2nd place illustrates just the overall dominance of youtube as well since Netflix came in second with 7.6% of overall viewership.

And then if you look at the pie just among streamers, youtube, total viewership was close to 25% of overall market share and media companies are certainly starting to take notice here even with my conversations among different executives, analysts, youtube is consistently brought up as a top competitor.

And then if you think of the success of user generated content and how youtube has really been able to leverage that, you wonder if some of those competitors will perhaps dip their toe into user generated content of their own.

And remember that earlier this year, the company did announce that users watched more than 1 billion hours of youtube content on TV screens every single day.

So a lot of potential there are youtube creators are now in a position where they want to start being considered for Emmy Awards.

They want to start positioning themselves as real producers, directors that can stand side by side with the rest of them in Hollywood.

So youtube has been around for a while, but now it seems like it's finally starting to have its moment in the sun.

And a lot of these media companies are going to be forced to look at them as a real competitor.