The news: YouTube slightly edges out Netflix as the leader in global streaming ad growth, according to a recent DoubleVerify survey of over 2,000 marketers.

• 70% of marketers surveyed said they increased their YouTube streaming investment in the past year, while only 9% reported decreasing spending on the platform.
• 65% said they increased Netflix investment; 13% decreased investment.
• Amazon Prime followed, with 59% surveyed increasing investment; 48% also spent more on Samsung streaming offerings.

But our data shows that Netflix’s ads business is growing at a much faster rate despite YouTube’s advantage as a free service—indicating that premium content environments are becoming a strong draw for advertisers.

Zooming in: The research emphasizes the close battle between YouTube and Netflix for streaming ad dollars and points to a broader fight for viewer attention.

• March Nielsen data reaffirms DoubleVerify’s findings: YouTube captured 13.2% of time spent with streaming, while Netflix claimed second place at 8.2%.
• YouTube was the world’s most popular media platform in 2025, with users spending 11.4 billion minutes there each day, per our forecast. Netflix ranked second at 10 billion daily minutes.