The largest streaming service on the globe, Netflix, released a massive amount of viewer data on 99% of its catalogue for the first time, encompassing 100 billion hours of streaming.
With almost 250 million subscribers internationally, the large amount of data released found that couch potatoes watched 812 million hours of The Night Agent, marking the popular thriller as its top-watched program in the first half of 2023.
Before the report was released and during the actor and writers strikes in Hollywood, the streaming behemoth has been critiqued for a lack of clarity around data on its top-performing content on the platform.
The strikes stopped the entertainment industry in its tracks, which saw writers and actors calling for better working wages, protections, and royalties for high-performing shows on streaming platforms.
Netflix Co-chief executive Ted Sarandos owned up to an absence of transparency, which bred mistrust in the artistic community, but he said that Netflix kept data private because it wanted to experiment without sharing vital company insights with rivals.
“This is a big step forward for Netflix and our industry,” Netflix announced in a blog post.
“We believe the viewing information in this report… will give creators and our industry deeper insights into our audiences, and what resonates with them.”
The creative community, specifically workers in traditional broadcast and cable television, depends on this kind of data because with insights in hand, creators can better conceptualise the type of content to make that is in demand. It will also inform how to market and monetise the content.
Netflix said that they will now release The What We Watched report every six months, which takes 18,000 titles and ranks them by the number of hours watched from January to June in 2023.
The report revealed roughly 100 billion hours of program watching time, finding that the other high-performing shows were Ginny & Georgia, Gilmore Girls, Seinfeld, Friends and The Office, with The Mother with Jennifer Lopez as the numero uno movie, with 249 million hours of streaming. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story also did very well and had around 503 million hours viewed.
Also, the report found that non-English content accounted for roughly a third of overall watching. Additionally, Netflix asserted that the report clearly underscores viewers still want to watch older movies and shows.
According to Sarandos, The What We Watched report reflected that 55% of Netflix hours watched were derived from original films and series and 45% from licensed titles.
“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,” the massive content streamer said.
Prior to the report release, Netflix added an independent service with ads, which involves more transparency because advertisers want intelligence on how well content does and what viewers want.
