It’s no longer news that YouTube has become the most dominant force in American connected TV viewing, but the share it’s conquering in U.S. living rooms seems to increase every month.
The Alphabet-owned video platform reached another all-time high in monthly TV usage share, according to Nielsen’s latest “Media Distributor Gauge” ranker, accounting for 12.4% of all “glass” television viewing in April by media company.
Since accounting for a record 11.6% of all usage in February, surpassing Disney in the process, YouTube has continued to expand its market share dominance. And Nielsen’s measurement doesn’t even account for usage on mobile devices and desktop computers. The research company’s ranker also doesn’t factor in usage of virtual pay TV service YouTube TV.
On its Gauge landing page, Nielsen has archived “Distributor Gauge” rankings dating back to December 2023. The all-time market share high occurred in August of last year, when wall-to-wall cross-platform Summer Olympics coverage from Paris drove NBCUniversal to a 13.4% U.S. market share for all 2+ TV viewing. But that performance appears to be an anomaly. NBCU hasn’t come close to that benchmark. And YouTube’s April performance is the next best thing to it.
YouTube’s consumption share has kept on steadily expanding. Consider that in April 2024, its share among media companies stood at only 9.6%. Equity analysts expect YouTube, which generated $54.2 billion total revenue last year, to surpass Disney as the No. 1 media company in total revenue for 2025.
YouTube also posted a personal best of 12.4% of market share for Nielsen’s flagship “Gauge” rankings for April, which tally usage of individual platforms.
YouTube’s growth comes amid an overall expansion of streaming usage. Streaming accounted for an all-time high of 44.3% of all U.S. TV consumption in April, versus a share of 38.4% in April 2024.
YouTube isn’t the only streaming platform to show notable growth. Paramount+ expanded its usage share to 2.4% in April compared to 1.0% in the April 2024 Gauge, with hits including Irish mafia crime drama MobLand, starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren, driving record viewership for the platform.
Also showing remarkable growth is the Roku Channel, which expanded its viewership share YoY from 1.4% to 2.4%. The Roku Channel continued to extend its lead over Tubi as the No. 1 pure-play ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) platform, according to Nielsen’s rankings.
Meanwhile, Disney+, riding the viewership wave of Star Wars spinoff series Andor in April, saw its viewership share expand to 5.0% versus 1.8% in April 2024.