Yeah, the Iron Man argument rests heavily with the current wave of new fans. If we go beyond that to, say, people who haven't seen the movies, Spider-Man crushes the next 5 combined at Marvel. My mom could probably tell you Spidey's name is Peter Parker. She'd struggle to remember who Iron Man is at all. SM is part of the culture in a way that's a bit hard to match in a decade, regardless of how big that decade has been.
And yeah, Wolverine hasn't been mentioned as much as I thought. Not long ago, he was in more books than anyone, even Pete, to the point where Deadpool was cracking jokes about it. He's still a top 3 draw at Marvel.