Disney’s robust catalog of channels and networks normally beats YouTube in TV Usage, except for July. That month YouTube won 10.4% of TV usage, beating out Disney’s 9.9% according to Nielson‘s Gauge Report.
YouTube was the first platform to break 10% of the viewership usage. Most views for the month came from the coveted Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences. Kids aged 2-17 put YouTube past Disney’s combined services for July 2024.
One likely reason is that kids were off for the summer and were looking for engaging and interesting content, and “Star Wars: The Acolyte” wasn’t going to cut it. Summer is also slow for TV, as most series are on hiatus.
Disney is still leading in TV usage overall, winning 11% of the total viewership from January to July.
Interestingly Tubi is tied with Disney+ for the streaming percentage. Rupert Murdock sold Fox to Disney in 2017 for over $71 billion and then purchased Tubi for $440 million in 2020. Now the platform is caught up to Disney+ and could surpass it in the future.
Here is Gauge Chart for July 2024 showing YouTube ranking first over Disney owned platforms.
August 2024 will be interesting as the Summer Olympics were taking place for large part of the month. This may increase Peacock’s numbers.
June 2024 Gauge numbers showed an upswing overall.
Hulu lost ground moving into July, 2024. YouTube seemed to make some of the largest gains between June and July of this year.
The major streamers will need to watch out for YouTube as it is overtaking them while winning over some of the Gen Z audience that streamers and film studios covet.
Meanwhile the long forgotten Gen X audience is quickly becoming a big target for streaming companies. Generation X bridges the gap between old media and new media having grown up with a lot of the IP that Hollywood has been mining, but also being a large viewing demographic for streaming services. Making them an ideal demographic for advertisers and advertisting dollars for the streaming services.
It will also be interesting to see how Disney will perform compared to YouTube for the last month of summer. After summer how will these numbers be impacted when kids are spending more time in school and those working in education are also back to work more often. How will these numbers change as we move into fall and winter?
YouTube has a big win in July but will Disney once again pull ahead?
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