Tube Trends: Media Emphasizes Theatrical For Summer Movie Season

Data & Measurement

Jul 1

While media companies continue to cover what’s been a rich amount of sports news this summer, the more noticeable June shift was toward theatrical trailers.

Tubular Labs data looks at U.S. media creators’ YouTube presence in June. And one of the major takeaways? Most are incredibly focused on getting audiences in movie theater seats.

Among the 20 most-seen videos uploaded by U.S. media companies in June, nine were movie trailers, and another (top video Stuart Fails To Save the Universe) was an HBO Max trailer for an upcoming show.

It’s a distinct difference in emphasis year-over-year when looking back at last June.

Not a single theatrical trailer was among the top 100 by views (from U.S. media creators) in June 2025. And the only real movie content was from Sony and Netflix around smash-hit KPop Demon Hunters.

While the streaming hit would eventually hit theaters for a brief stint to capitalize on its Netflix success, the videos were all very much focused on the movie’s popular soundtrack. The songs accounted for 10 of the 20 most-watched U.S. media videos last June, according to Tubular. And all of those scored over 140 million views (led by “Golden,” which has now hit 1.5 billion).

The first theatrical trailer is for A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, garnering 25.9 million views, but it ranked 163rd among those same U.S. media videos on YouTube.

Still, in part due to the KPop Demon Hunters hype, U.S. media still performed far better in terms of YouTube views in June 2025.

Tubular data notes that videos uploaded last June collected 40.1 billion views, compared to 13.5 billion this year. Last year, those media companies also published fewer videos, yet averaged over three times as many views per upload (75.5K vs. 22.3K) and were significantly more engaging (232 million more engagements) as well.

KPop hype helped, sure. Yet still only accounts for 14% of the total views from June 2025.

So what else were U.S. media pushing last June?

Theatrical was part of it, yet last June and July didn’t feature the same level of major movie releases this year does. Especially since part of June 2026’s promotion cycle includes a push for the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day (almost assuredly a billion-dollar movie, as the franchise has become accustomed to).

When comparing last year’s media approach to last year’s, movie & TV-related content accounted for 21% of YouTube views in June 2026, compared to 28.4% last June (again, anchored by KPop Demon Hunters, which made up over a third of those views).

Media creators might be big on sports this year (No. 1 by video category views in June 2026), but kids entertainment & toys videos generated 8.1x more views last June vs. this June. Food & drink, gaming videos and music-related videos were also significantly larger last June as this year’s YouTube presence is seemingly coalescing around one of two topics: Either theatrical releases or the World Cup

This year’s trailer focus isn’t necessarily over yet, either, with plenty of bigger releases coming in July — with more time left to promote them.

What may be beneficial for media companies this time around can actually come from last June’s approach, too.

Music-focused videos were highly effective in generating YouTube views in June 2025, with 1.6 million views per upload (highest among all video categories from U.S. media creators). While not every release can have a hit music number — or be KPop Demon Hunters — pulling out musical moments can still work effectively.

Among the 2026 trailers performing well, the live-action version of Moana understands this intrinsically. Its top-performing video was a clip of the song “Demigod” (which was also a popular number from the original animated version). But comparatively, many of the most popular videos around 2026 movies are standard trailers without significant content variation.

That, more than even the popularity of KPop Demon Hunters, is what potentially set last year’s content apart. It wasn’t just trailers. It was music, and shorts, and clips and a variety of formats that kept audiences — especially younger audiences — engaged around the content.