Marking a step towards greater data transparency, Netflix has published the first in a planned series of biannual reports, revealing viewing numbers across more than 18,000 titles.
The data is the most comprehensive to be released by any streaming platform and compares for the first time the number of hours viewed on original and licensed content.
Viewership between January and June 2023 for the thriller series The Night Agent: Season 1 starring Gabriel Basso leads the way on 812.1m hours, according to What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report.
The top four titles in the report after The Night Agent S1 are: Ginny And Georgia S2 on 665.1m hours viewed; Korean drama series The Glory S1 on 622.8m; The Addams Family spin-off Wednesday S1 starring breakout Jenna Ortega on 507.7m; and Queen Charlotte: A Bridgeton Story on 503m.
Non-English stories generated 30% of all viewing. Besides The Glory South Korean content figures prominently with Season 1 of reality show Physical: 100 on 235m and limited romantic comedy series Crash Course In Romance on 234.8m breaking into the top 25.
The popularity of Spanish-language content is also evident. Mexican crime series La Reina del Sur: Season 3 ranks 13th on 429.6m hours viewed, while Colombian thriller The Marked Heart: Season 2 ranks 38th on 174.3m, Colombian crime series Pablo Escobar, El Patron Del Mal: Season 1 comes in at 41st on 170.1m, and Latin American musical family show Chiquititas ranks at number 44 on 162m.
Netflix’s VP strategy and analysis Lauren Smith told reporters during a brief presentation on Tuesday that viewing of Netflix original content accounted for roughly 55% of the report.
The nature of the biannual report’s metric means TV seasons will generate more hours viewed than features given their longer aggregated run times. Accordingly, there is only one feature in the top 20 – Niki Caro’s action thriller The Mother starring Jennifer Lopez at number 20 on 249.9m hours viewed. Chris Hemsworth action vehicle Extraction 2 is the next highest-ranked feature at number 29 on 201.8m.
The study encompasses 99% of all viewing on the platform and records all Netflix content watched for more than 50,000 hours over the six-month period, with each entry rounded to 100,000 hours viewed. It does not reveal how many subscribers watched a show or feature in its entirety.
Describing the report on its company blog on Tuesday as “a big step forward for Netflix and our industry”, Netflix said the data, combined with its weekly Top 10 and Most Popular lists, will “give creators and our industry deeper insights into our audiences, and what resonates with them”.
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos told reporters that while the company’s original strategy was to be less transparent as it scaled up, that had led to unintended consequences. “It created an atmosphere of mistrust with producers and creators,” he said, adding: “This is on the continuum of transparency as streaming has become more and more mainstream.”
Data transparency was one of the core demands of the writers and actors guilds during their contract renewal talks this year. There have also been calls from media following a slew of vaguely worded press releases over the years about high-performing shows and films without deeper data-led context.
The streamer also needed to show greater transparency when it launched its ad-supported tier, as advertisers demand more granular information before allocating spend on the platform.
Sarandos added that while Netflix carries shows from other broadcasters like Suits, he did not foresee licensing Netflix content to other platforms. Suits enjoyed a much-publicised boost and ruled the Nielsen US streaming charts when it dropped on Netflix over the summer and is expected to figure prominently in the July-December 2023 report, which is anticipated in the new year,
There is considerable overlap of viewership trends with the weekly Top 10 chart launched in 2021, with more than 60% of Netflix titles released between January and June appeared on the charts.
However the hours viewed metric is no longer applied to the Top 10 chart, which since June has been predicated on “views” based on the number of hours viewed divided by the total run time of the film or episode, which the streamer described at the time as “good evolution” in a sector where it has conceded there is no perfect streaming metric.
Wednesday is Netflix’s largest English-language series but places fourth because it dropped in November 2022 and most audiences had viewed it by the time the study period of What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report kicked in in January.
The company said on its blog, “When reading the report it’s important to remember:
· Success on Netflix comes in all shapes and sizes, and is not determined by hours viewed alone. We have enormously successful movies and TV shows with both lower and higher hours viewed. It’s all about whether a movie or TV show thrilled its audience – and the size of that audience relative to the economics of the title; and
· To compare between titles it’s best to use our weekly Top 10 and Most Popular lists, which take into account run times and premiere dates.
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