Nielsen just published its ordered rundown of the major streaming services and their absolute and relative popularity in July, and there aren’t any big surprises at the top. YouTube once again came in first place with Netflix hot on its heels in a competitive second place finish well ahead of the next group of four that includes Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+ and Tubi. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as strong of news for Max, as the streaming service paired with HBO finished a distant ninth, losing out to a surging Peacock which saw stronger than normal numbers thanks to the Olympics.
Nielsen measures the popularity of individual services by the total number of minutes viewed during a given month, which equates to a percentage of the overall consumption share. So, it’s important to note there’s not a direct correlation between profitability and these rankings. YouTube, along with services Tubi and Roku, which finished 6th and 7th, are at least partially free, which gives them a major leg up, but even so, you’d have to think Max can’t be happy long-term with finishing 9th or thereabouts. It finished 8th in May and 8th in June, with each month including July being between 1.2% and 1.4% of total viewership, but each time it was well off the pace of the middle tier.
Max is in a pretty decent place with subscribers. Warner Bros recently announced it crossed the 100M subscriber threshold, which only Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ can claim, but that’s not equating to a huge surge in minutes watched. The second season of House Of The Dragon, which recently aired its finale, was a major hit and routinely among the top five in popularity across all streaming services, but it still wasn’t enough to create any game-changing forward progress.
It also likely wasn’t enough to make any meaningful change in profitability. Despite its massive number of subscribers, Max took a big financial loss during the first part of the year, and while it has added a few million subscribers since then, it’s unlikely to push the service significantly closer to profitability. Instead, it’ll remain in that gray area where it’s extremely popular but not popular enough to pay for how expensive it is to house and create all that programming.
Peacock also took a big loss earlier this year, but its investors will likely have an easier time looking on the bright side given the huge Olympics numbers. Viewers watched an estimated 4.5 billion minutes of Olympics content in just the first three days. Advertising was also reportedly way up, and it’ll be interesting to see where the streaming service lands in August, given it had a full two weeks of Olympics coverage.
You can check out the full top ten list below…
| Streaming Service | % Of Viewership |
| YouTube | 10.4 |
| Netflix | 8.4 |
| Prime Video | 3.4 |
| Hulu | 2.7 |
| Disney+ | 2.1 |
| Tubi | 2.1 |
| Roku | 1.6 |
| Peacock | 1.5 |
| Max | 1.4 |
| Paramount+ | 1.1 |
Despite some complaints about it eliminating content, Max still boasts maybe the strongest library in the entire streaming game. It also has the prestige of HBO content and tons of great reality offerings with Discovery. It feels like there’s a path to it being one of the most popular streaming services, but it just hasn’t found the right sell yet. Until it does, it'll likely remain near the bottom of the monthly top 10.
