For years, YouTube has been handily beating Netflix‘s watch hours within the U.S. Now contemporary information has proven it’s beating the platform’s watch hours globally, too.
And Netflix–regardless of co-CEO/YouTube critic Ted Sarandos admitting YouTube “is TV“–just isn’t completely satisfied about it.
Final week, as inventory fell after its Q2 earnings did not impress shareholders, Netflix posted a viewership report protecting the primary half of 2026. Its thesis: watch hours don’t matter, truly.
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“We measure engagement not solely by the amount of hours watched, but in addition the standard of that have for our audiences,” it mentioned. “To achieve success, we additionally must have quite a lot of programming that appeals to completely different tastes and moods.”
(btw, regardless of the hours not mattering, Netflix did say the primary six months of 2026 introduced it “greater than 97B hours on Netflix–our highest view hours up to now for a half–throughout quite a lot of genres and languages.”)
Co-CEO Greg Peters echoed this sentiment in the course of the platform’s earnings name, saying that not all watch hours “are created equal.” He cited Netflix’s lean into reside occasions for example, as a result of reside occasions apparently drive income and are good for brand spanking new subscriber acquisition, however don’t lead to a whole lot of watch hours.
Netflix additionally revealed this report is the final twice-yearly one it is going to launch. Shifting ahead, it’ll solely publish viewership stories as soon as per 12 months “to maintain the give attention to our main monetary metrics–income and working revenue,” it mentioned.
That is the most recent in a string of strikes Netflix has made to obscure viewers measurement information from outdoors observers. It stopped reporting quarterly subscriber good points in 2025, saying the quantity was “more and more much less correct in capturing the state of the enterprise.” As a substitute, it mentioned, it could give attention to different “key metrics that we predict matter most to the enterprise.”
Watch time appeared like it could be a type of key metrics, however Netflix’s focus, we suppose, is as an alternative on uncooked financials.
So how are these trying?
Netflix got here in at $12.86 billion towards analysts’ anticipated $13 billion, with earnings per share at $0.82 versus anticipated $0.84. On high of the marginally lower-than-expected earnings, Netflix’s largest section–U.S. and Canada–had year-over-year progress of 10%, an underperformance in comparison with the final 4 quarters.
This all factors to “some sort of slowdown,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Geetha Ranganathan informed Yahoo Finance, “and I’m not essentially certain administration has articulated what they will do to reinvigorate the enterprise right here.”
Shareholders appeared to agree with the sentiment: Netflix’s inventory dropped almost 8% following the decision.
Right here at Tubefilter, we’ve been monitoring what’s a minimum of a part of Netflix’s reinvigoration effort: poaching high content material creators from YouTube.
The platform has been on an absolute tear currently, signing offers with Jay Shetty, Rhett & Hyperlink‘s Legendary, Sizzling Ones, and the Stokes Twins. We already knew it considered YouTube like a “farm league,” however in current weeks, that method is extra evident than ever.
