“There are commentators out there saying ‘Television is YouTube’,” remarked Thinkbox head of research Anthony Jones. “Not in the UK, it isn’t. It might be in the US; it’s not in the UK.”
According to January figures from Nielsen, YouTube accounts for a higher 11% of total TV viewing in the US — the most of any streaming service. By 2026, YouTube TV, YouTube’s over-the-top streaming service, is projected to be the top pay-TV distributor in that market. But according to Jones, YouTube viewership on UK TV sets has some way to go to catch up with its popularity in the US. He noted that YouTube was more popular among the 16-34 age bracket; 17% of the cohort’s viewing time on a TV set is on YouTube, compared with 43% of viewing time on broadcaster TV.
“There’s a perception that YouTube is significantly bigger than it is,”
he added.
A spokesperson for YouTube told The Media Leader that YouTube does not have a direct integration with Barb, meaning there are “limitations to their methodology which do not currently meet our principles for comprehensive and comparable cross-media measurement”.
They continued: “In the UK, we have an integration with Ipsos Iris which provides accurate reporting on YouTube watch time and we also partner with third parties including Nielsen and AudienceProject. In May 2024, Ipsos found that 46m people in the UK aged over 18 watched YouTube, including spending 35 minutes a day watching YouTube on connected TV.”
Viewership skewed
According to December Barb data, the heaviest quartile of YouTube viewers on TV sets accounted for 87% of total viewing time on the platform — equivalent to one hour and 47 minutes of daily watching. In comparison, the other three-quarters of YouTube viewers accounted for just 13% of total viewing time, equivalent to only five minutes per day.
This is distinct from broadcaster viewership, which is less dramatically skewed towards heavy viewers and therefore achieves greater audience penetration, Jones highlighted. For commercial broadcasters, the top quartile of TV set viewing accounts for 68% of total viewing time (or five hours and 34 minutes per day).
As Jones explained: “The heaviest 25% of YouTube viewers account for nearly 90% of YouTube viewing. The remaining 75% of the population are only, on average, watching YouTube for five minutes per day.
“YouTube consumption is highly, highly, highly skewed. Yep, there’s lots of hours. But only relatively limited reach. TV is less skewed.”
YouTube is not alone in having a relatively smaller number of highly loyal consumers relative to the UK’s commercial broadcasters and the BBC. Netflix and Disney+ also account for similarly modest reach while nevertheless attracting high average viewing time.
Jones singled out Twitch as being exemplar of this phenomenon. “There’s a cohort of 16- to 20-year-old boys who are surgically attached to Twitch on a TV set, as far as I can see,” he joked.
However, he noted that streaming services “move much closer to commercial TV” when breaking down reach and viewing hours for the 16-34 cohort, given their greater popularity among Gen Z and millennials.
For advertisers, the launch of ad-supported streaming tiers over the past two years has offered more opportunities to reach that younger audience. Ad-supported viewing share grew from 39% to 49% in the past year, according to Barb data.
Jones noted, however, that even as younger cohorts embrace streaming, TV is seeing “enormous stability in overall viewing”, with consumers “still watching the same programmes”, by and large, as they did a decade ago and in “reasonably similar” numbers.
“They’re just watching it in different ways,” said Jones.
Of YouTube, he concluded: “YouTube on a TV set is growing, but it’s still relatively small.”
Source: uk.themedialeader.com