YouTube’s viewership among 2-to-11 year olds is up 4% — and Netflix’s share is declining

Toddlers have become a dependable audience for YouTube, and that trend is leading to strategic shifts at companies like Netflix. The streamer is devising new distribution strategies to compete with the world’s leading video platform in the arena of children’s programming.

Nielsen recently provided a data point that illustrates YouTube’s dominance of the kid-friendly content market. The measurement agency found that Netflix’s viewership share among 2-to-11-year-olds in the U.S. sat at 21% in September 2023. That percentage represents a 4% decline since September 2021. Over the same period, YouTube’s viewership share rose from 29.4% to 33%.

Netflix is losing ground to YouTube among kid viewers even though its library of children’s programming continues to capture attention. The streamer recently shared viewership statistics from the first half of 2023 for all its shows and movies, and several family-oriented hits cracked the top 100. The fifth season of Paw Patrol was the 65th-most-watched Netflix program globally between January and June of this year, with 130.7 million hours of watch time.

Season one of CoComelon was 58th on that list with 136.2 million hours of watch time

, but the Moonbug-produced hit is also huge on YouTube. It got more than 2.6 billion YouTube views in February 2023 alone — and that doesn’t take any of its secondary channels into consideration. Other CoComelon-related channels, like JJ’s Animal Time, have claimed ten-digit view counts of their own.

YouTube’s success with children’s programming has turned it into a top choice for distribution. One of Moonbug’s new CoComelon properties, CoComelon Lane, got a one-week exclusive window on YouTube before hitting Netflix. According to The Wall Street Journal, that move was made with Netflix’s blessing. “It is really difficult to build new franchises, especially in this fragmented streaming market,” said Paramount+ Head of Programming Jeff Grossman.

Those difficulties are causing streamers to lessen their investments in children’s programming. Data from Ampere shows that the eight largest streamers in the U.S. have produced 61% fewer kids’ originals year-over-year. That’s a 30% bigger decline than the dip experienced by all originals counted together.