In the wake of the runaway success of “Squid Game,” Netflix has announced that it is changing the way it publicly reveals viewing data.
In a letter to shareholders for its third quarter, Netflix says that in the future it will report total hours viewed within 28 days of release. That replaces the ‘view’ metric it has used since late 2019 which counts any user account watching for as little as two minutes as a ‘view’.
The shareholder letter says “engagement as measured by hours viewed is a slightly better indicator of the overall success of our titles and member satisfaction. It also matches how outside services measure TV viewing and gives proper credit to rewatching.” In addition, the streamer says it will ‘more regularly’ release hours viewed counts.
In terms of the old figures though, Netflix was still happy to tout them saying that “Squid Game” racked up 142 million views over its first 28 days of release – smashing the previous high for any title (film or TV) which was the 99 million views for the Chris Hemsworth action feature “Extraction”.
Netflix didn’t mention hours viewed but a Bloomberg report has cited over 1.4 billion hours of watch time in 23 days – easily besting the previous record of 625 million hours for the first season of “Bridgerton”.
Other figures announced by Netflix today included returnees “Money Heist” S5 (69 million views) and “Sex Education” S3 (55 million); limited series “Maid” (67 million); and feature films “Sweet Girl” (68 million), “The Kissing Booth 3” (59 million), “Blood Red Sky” (53 million), and “Vivo” (46 million).
The company reportedly has 214 million subscribers worldwide, up 16% year-over-year, with a further 8.5 million expected by end of the year.
Source: THR