Disney’s Hulu was the leading platform in terms of share of streaming ad time in 2024, and grew its share 20% over the course of the past year, according to TVision’s latest State of Streaming report.
Per the report, Hulu accounted for 13% share of ad time across AVOD and FAST apps in 2024, followed closely by Google’s YouTube at 11%.
TVision’s report is based on its opt-in panel of 5,000 households across the U.S., representative of the country that uses tech to measures presence in-room and attention for all TV viewing across programming and advertising. In addition to leading at year-end, Hulu’s share has been growing, increasing by 20% percent from Q1 to Q4 last year.
The Share of Streaming Ad Time from TVision identifies the percent of the total ad time that a specific app captured, and TVision says it’s a good indicator of the amount of ad-tier viewers in the service and how frequently they engage with the app. It doesn’t measure quality of or demand for inventory in any given app.
As viewers continue to turn to streaming for TV consumption, understanding share of ad time can be important for advertisers who want to capitalize on audience and engagement to connect brands with consumers. TVision’s streaming data is for AVOD and FAST and excludes that of MVPDs and virtual MVPDs like YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, which it said is because the ads experience mirrors linear and in many cases are sold as part of national linear buys.
TVision noted that the industry mostly provides subscriber figures, which are important, but emphasized advertisers care about subscribers on ad plans and how to best reach attentive and engaged audiences. A company spokesperson told StreamTV Insider that other third-party measurement can’t differentiate between ad tier and ad-free premium subscribers.
Early on ads advantage
In terms of Hulu and YouTube’s leading 2024 shares, TVision’s Katherine Mullaney attributed Hulu in part to an advantage for being in the ad-supported game longer than other major streamers such as Netflix, giving it time to have larger bases and higher ad loads.
“For YouTube, the combination of being the app with the most time spent and having almost all viewing being ad-supported means they are going to have a natural advantage in capturing CTV ad time spent,” Mullaney, director of Products & Analytics at TVision, told StreamTV Insider via email. “Historically, Hulu was an app primarily for next-day (ad-supported) viewing of linear programs, so the experience for many longtime viewers has included ads. In addition to a high share of ad-supported subscribers, we believe that having this well established ad-supported tier means that they can maintain a higher ad load than some of the apps that have only recently introduced ads."
In terms of streaming ad time, Netflix ranked much lower with just 3% share in 2024 – ranking ninth out of the top 10 and behind streamers Paramount+, Prime Video, and FASTs like The Roku Channel, Tubi and Pluto TV - although ahead of last-place Disney+. Again, part of that speaks to the relatively more mature ad-supported base on Hulu, plans for which had been available before Netflix and Disney+ each jumped into the ads game in late 2022. And TVision noted that while Netflix only grabbed a minor share of streaming ad time in 2024, quarterly data shows that doubled from 1.8% in Q1 2024 to 3.6% in Q4.

As the report shows, there’s still a bit of a disconnect in terms of where consumers are spending time watching content and the biggest environments for ad time on streaming.
For example, despite being ad time share leader, Hulu didn’t capture the most viewing among streaming apps in 2024. Per TVision, its 10% share of time spent trailed that of YouTube (21%) and Netflix (16%), – which each also regularly rank as the top two apps respectively in Nielsen’s The Gauge monthly TV time snapshot. Hulu also came in third terms of household reach in the TVision report, garnering 50% reach compared to Netflix at 71% and YouTube at 67%.


The results speak to the environment, whereby viewers are shifting viewing to streaming services but even the most popular apps are still not necessarily flush with ad time, in part because of their relatively still young ads businesses.
The TVision spokesperson noted that apps that have offered ad tiers longer, or serve ads to a larger portion of their subscriber base “will naturally have a larger share of the overall ad time.”
“Along the same lines, Netflix and Disney+’s relative newness in offering an ad tier is also likely to be a factor in having lower share of overall ad time,” TVision continued. “If their growth continues on the trends indicated in Q4, both in terms of news subscribers to the ad tier, and our share of ad time, they will continue to close the gap.”
In January, Disney disclosed that in the U.S. and Canada it has 112 million monthly active ad-supported users across its streaming properties (including Hulu, Disney+ and ESP+). At most recent disclosure, Netflix reported reaching 70 million monthly active users on its plan with ads, while during Q4 earnings said ads plans accounted for over 55% of signups in countries where available. Separate analysis from One Touch Intelligence estimated Disney’s U.S. ad tier base increased to 38% by the end of 2024, while estimating only 8% of Netflix’s domestic base is on the ads tier.
October analysis from Comscore data and Evan Shapiro also pegged YouTube and Hulu as adverting leaders. Utilizing TV viewership data from 29 million households, The Score Report showed that despite continued streaming consumption – just 13.1% of TV ad time was viewed on streaming platforms in Q2 2024, compared to a whopping 86.9% for cable and broadcast (which includes pay TV services from vMVPDs like YouTube TV and cable apps).
“As advertising plays an increasingly important role on TV and specifically in streaming, it will be important to understand where ad impressions are actually being viewed, and where the money will follow,” wrote Shapiro in the report.
One common theme across consumption and ad tracking is that YouTube as a standalone app is making its mark in the living room and Hulu, along with its Disney owner, is a dominant force in the ad space.
In addition to leading streaming rankings on The Gauge and in TVision’s report for shares of time spent, The Score Report found YouTube ranked fifth across the TV ecosystem in terms of share of ad voice or exposure in the first half of 2024. That was behind broadcasters CBS, ABC, NBC, but, as the report noted, with a 4.6% share YouTube was within striking distance of Fox’s 5.3% share and ahead of all cable TV networks.
“This is indicative of the rapid evolution of YouTube from social video platform to mainstream entertainment and TV platform,” wrote the study authors.
And Hulu was not far behind with a 3.6% share, where Shapiro also pointed to its historical roots in the AVOD space as an advantage.
“Hulu has a remarkably strong share of ad voice, ahead the rest of Pay TV and all the other premium streamers (note that neither Netflix nor Prime made the Top 20), built from a much longer history in the streaming ad game,” the report stated.
While ad tiers of many premium streaming platforms are still relatively nascent, Shapiro wrote that YouTube and Hulu clearly “are TV advertising forces to be reckoned with, especially given their attractive, young audiences.”
That said, while YouTube is a clear CTV leader, a Pixability report found it’s becoming a bit more of a puzzle for ad agencies in how to categorize and handle the platform, which serves up a variety of content across different lengths and genres, including vast amounts of user-generated video. Whether that type of content and video platform is equal to more premium video services in the eye of advertisers remains somewhat of an open question, but advertising tends to follow eyeballs – particularly as YouTube disclosed users globally consumed more than 1 billion hours of content daily on CTV in 2024.
“YouTube does seem here to stay in the living room,” the TVision spokesperson said, noting the platform continued to lead the firm’s overall Share of Time Spent, and has done so for several quarters. Still, the vendor noted YouTube viewers “engage with content a bit differently than premium subscriber viewers.”
“It’s helpful to consider genre or category and length of time, when thinking about YouTube,” the measurement firm advised. “Instructional tutorials generally have high levels of attention, whereas longer videos from categories such as sleep sounds have much lower attention.”