Sabri Suby, Founder, King Kong
YouTube has officially overtaken Netflix in average daily viewing worldwide, and if you’re a marketer or business owner, you need to sit up and pay attention. There’s an important trend emerging here, and it goes far beyond “platform A beats platform B”.
UK-based agency Digital i tracked audiences across 20 international markets and found that average daily viewing per YouTube account jumped from 87.2 minutes in 2024 to 99.1 minutes in 2025. Over the same period, Netflix’s average fell from 100.5 minutes to 93.4 minutes per account.
Let’s unpack what this means for brands and how it will shape short-form-focused marketing strategies.
Numbers and context paint the picture
The numbers don’t paint the full picture, but the context does. Context tells us where people are watching – and it’s surprisingly not on their phones.
It turns out, people aren’t half-watching YouTube while they scroll. Instead, they’re sitting down and deliberately turning on their TV to watch a video. The stats prove it: TV viewing grew from 28% to 35% between 2024 and 2025, while mobile viewing dropped from 35% to 31%.
If you’re a marketer, you’ll know that deliberate consumer behaviour is like striking gold. Why? Because it means people are focused.
For years, the dominant playbook has been to buy attention, run ads, and jump on whatever trend the algorithm is rewarding this week. And that worked when attention was cheap and abundant and when you could interrupt your way into someone’s wallet.
Not anymore. Consumers are drowning in content. They’re hit with thousands of ads a day, and they’ve developed an immune system to them all. The old interruption model is dying a slow, expensive death, and every year the price of admission goes up.
Now, before anyone accuses me of being some armchair expert telling you ads are dead, let me be clear: I’ve spent over $300 million on paid traffic and generated $7.8 billion in sales for clients across more than 1,000 different industries.
There’s no doubt in my mind that ads still work. They print money when you do them right. But here’s what most people miss: ads are rented attention. The moment you stop paying, the traffic stops, the leads stop, and the whole machine grinds to a halt. You’re a tenant, and the landlord keeps raising the rent.
Can we own attention?
I’m going to call it – YouTube is the most interesting platform on the planet right now.
While every other platform is racing to the bottom with shorter, faster, more disposable content, YouTube is one of the last places where depth actually wins. People will happily sit there for 20, 30, even 60 minutes if you genuinely teach them something, entertain them, or solve a real problem. We can’t get that kind of attention with a six-second pre-roll ad.
What’s remarkable is that this growth isn’t being driven by bite-sized content; it’s actually being driven by depth. And it’s not just one age group; Gen Z averages 111 minutes per day on YouTube, and the fastest-growing segment of viewers is men aged 55 to 64, up 15% since 2024.
To put it simply, the stats show a major shift in how people find time for longer-form content when it’s actually interesting.
Play the long game
There is something else to keep in mind here: this isn’t the easiest path to growing your audience. It will take more time, genuine skills, detailed planning and consistency. And unfortunately, time is the one commodity most businesses often lack.
Results can also take time, but it’s important to look at this from another angle. This type of real, valuable, well-executed content works while you’re not. It doesn’t disappear with the ad budget. In other words, it’s worth it.
If you’re looking for proof of how significant this shift is, look no further than Netflix’s response. The company has moved into video podcasts and is signing deals to stream long-form content around major events like the World Cup. They’ve recognised that this type of content is where the money is, so they’re pivoting accordingly.
What can businesses do from here?
I believe we’re heading into a world where every business falls into one of two camps: those that become media companies in their own right, and those that become invisible.
There’s no middle ground.
Consumers are actively choosing where their attention goes, and they’re gravitating toward the brands and people who educate, entertain and give value before asking for a single dollar.
The businesses that get this will build trust, authority and audiences that money literally cannot buy. The ones that don’t will keep cranking up their ad spend, wondering why it’s working less and less, while their competitors build empires of attention right under their noses.
Don’t be the second business.