Kids content on streaming is king as media companies chase profits

In the battle among streaming services to capture and keep subscribers, kids’ shows like “CoComelon” and “Bluey” are becoming powerful tools to help win the war.

Retaining customers has proven to be one of the biggest hurdles in the build-out of streaming. When Netflix reported subscriber losses in 2022, it sent a ripple effect through the industry and media companies began leaning into advertising and other business models to focus on profitability.

Meanwhile, companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney have been vocal about the need for quality content to drive subscriber growth. Children’s programming offers a unique value proposition for the streaming equation: it’s less expensive and has more longevity than other forms of content.

“Kids’ content drives a huge amount of engagement because kids watch it over and over and over and over. They never tire of it,” said Kevin Mayer, co-CEO of Candle Media, which owns Moonbug, the distributor of hit kids’ shows such as “CoComelon” and “Blippi.”

Mayer said reducing churn — industry jargon for customer losses — is the most substantial factor in improving streaming services’ economics, even more so than gaining new subscribers or generating revenue from those customers.

“If you churn, you lose subscribers, your top line diminishes. You have to spend marketing dollars to replenish, either to re-market to lost subscribers or to find new ones,” said Mayer.

Kids tend to repeat watching shows and movies, and it shows in the data. When there was initially only one season of “CoComelon” on Netflix, kids watched the same episodes multiple times, said Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president of product strategy and thought leadership at Nielsen.

The 154 episodes of animated Australian hit series “Bluey,” which streams on Disney+, had more than 25 billion minutes viewed in the first half of 2025, according to a Nielsen report released in July.

Kids’ films in general have been driving both the box office and have been many of the top streamed titles this year, according to Nielsen. Disney’s “Moana” is the most streamed movie in history and the sequel, “Moana 2,” had 7.2 billion viewing minutes since it was released on Disney+ in March, per Nielsen.

Live sports and hit TV series are often credited with drawing the biggest audiences and driving short-term subscriber additions for streamers, but services that feature strong portfolios of children’s content offer parents a reason to stick with subscriptions longer term, industry analysts and experts told CNBC.

A fourth-quarter video trends report from TiVo found that of nearly 4,500 survey respondents in the U.S. and Canada, those with children use 13.6 services compared with 8.2 for those without. Overall, the report from the fourth quarter of 2024 found that respondents had on average 9.9 services, down from 11.1 in the prior year. TiVo’s report found that people were dropping streaming apps due to lack of usage rather than higher pricing.

Meanwhile, kids being home from school during the summer has helped to spike both streaming and TV usage in June, according to a recent Nielsen report. Total TV usage among 6- to 17-year-olds was up 27% compared with the prior month, and streaming accounted for 66% of their total time spent with TV in June.

The strategy for media companies varies when it comes to using children’s content as a retention tool. Disney, Paramount Global and Netflix are among the streaming services with deep libraries of kids content. WBD, however, has stepped back from the genre, most notably with its decision to relinquish the streaming rights to “Sesame Street.”

The new season of the iconic children’s show will be released on Netflix later this year, with two more seasons to follow. Meanwhile, new “Sesame Street” episodes will also be available on PBS KIDS and its YouTube channel.

Netflix has reported kids’ and family content represents 15% of the company’s total viewing.

Part of the broader media strategy has also come to mean joining forces with the traditional media industry’s biggest competitor — Alphabet‘s YouTube.

Even Netflix, the streaming juggernaut that upended the media industry, is faced with the reality that social media platform YouTube is dominating streaming on the TV screen.

YouTube consistently pulls the highest TV viewership among all streaming platforms, according to Nielsen. As of June, YouTube accounted for 12.8% of overall streaming on the TV, surpassing Netflix and Disney+, Nielsen reported. In total, streaming viewership surpassed broadcast and cable…