Netflix Lifts The Veil Of Secrecy And Has Started Reporting Its Top Titles

Netflix has launched a new website to report the top films and series on its platform.

Until now, the streamer had been notoriously secretive about its viewership and had only sporadically reported data about how its content performed, a decision that not only frustrated viewers but also creators and studios who were unable to tout official numbers about the performance of their projects.

There have been a variety of third-party attempts to track viewership of Netflix shows, notably the website FlixPatrol.com. Last summer, the 98-year-old research firm Nielsen announced that it would begin tracking the performance of streaming platforms, but its tracking left much to be desired as it can only quantify viewership on tv sets, not phones and computers.

Netflix has said that it will publish its lists every Tuesday based on hours viewed from Monday to Sunday the previous week for both original and licensed titles. The company is categorizing its lists in four categories: global Top 10 lists for films (English), tv (English), films (non-English), and tv (non-English), as well as individual rankings for over 90 countries.

These weekly lists are in addition to the daily country Top 10 rows it introduced last year, which will now also be based on hours viewed.

Additionally, Netflix has said it will also regularly update overall lists for its all-time hits. These lists are based on the total hours viewed in a title’s first 28 days on Netflix. Interestingly, no animated projects, feature or tv, have made Netflix’s all-time list, though animated films and series constantly appear in Netflix’s weekly top 10, which currently goes back to late June 2021.

More details about Netflix’s measurement metrics can be found HERE. The company says that it has engaged the independent accounting firm EY to assess its new system. Netflix will make EY’s report about its metrics available to the public in 2022.

In a statement, Netflix offered these additional thoughts about its new measurement system:

Figuring out how best to measure success in streaming is hard, and there’s no one perfect metric. Traditional measures like box office or share of audience (which was designed to help advertisers understand success on linear tv) aren’t relevant to most streamers, including Netflix. Having looked at the different options, we believe engagement as measured by hours viewed is a strong indicator of a title’s popularity, as well as overall member satisfaction, which is important for retention in subscription services. In addition, hours viewed mirrors the way third parties measure popularity, encompasses rewatch (a strong sign of member joy) and can be consistently measured across different companies.

We recognize, however, that hours viewed does favor longer series and films. Because it’s hard to capture the nuances of different types of entertainment with one metric, we will also occasionally publish speciality lists— for example, top documentary features or reality shows, which our members love but may appear less prominently in these lists. Some people will ask why we don’t also report the number of members that finish a show or film. We believe that whether you miss the end of one episode in a 10 hour series (a crying baby or Netflix and chill), or you don’t wait for the easter egg in the credits sequence, or you rewatch one scene multiple times rather than the whole film, all that viewing should be reflected in the popularity of the title.