• by Wayne Friedman , 3 hours ago

Looking at the broad streaming trends over the last 12-month period ending in July, four platforms stand out with continued viewing growth -- YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and The Roku Channel.

Total day viewing of persons 2 years and older for YouTube was 29% higher to industry-leading 13.4% share.

In second place was premium streaming content leader Netflix -- 5% higher to a 8.8% share. Prime Video, in third place, tallied 12% more to a 3.8%, according to Nielsen’s July Total TV/Streaming Snapshot.

In fifth place as a solid top ten-streaming FAST (free ad-supported/streaming television) platform, Roku Channel made the biggest gain -- almost doubling (nearly 75% more) to 2.8% for July.

By contrast, legacy-media based streamers -- Walt Disney, Paramount, and NBCUniversal -- have largely remained at share levels similar to a year ago.

Walt Disney is now collectively at 4.7% (for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+) versus 4.8% (Disney+ and Hulu) a year ago.

Paramount has 1.9% share (Paramount+ Pluto TV) versus 1.8% share a year ago, while and NBCUniversal’s Peacock comes in with a 1.6% versus 1.5% a year ago.

This does not mean that legacy media CTV operations have not improved their financial performance. Revenue has soared, and nearly all are in a positive net profit and/or cash flow position.

For July, overall streaming platforms’ total viewing is now up 14% to a 47.3% share year-over-year, while cable TV viewing is down 17% (22.2% share) and broadcast TV has lost 10% (18.4%).

In July, Netflix had eight of the top-ten viewing titles in terms of minutes viewed, and “Squid Game” topped the list with 5.4 billion.