Netflix reveals how many accounts actually watch its top titles

During this year’s Code conference, Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos shared a significant amount of data on some of the streaming giant’s top titles – a rare move for a company that traditionally owns numbers close to the chest.

In one slide, shared as Sarandos spoke on the code scene with Kara Swisher, Netflix shared numbers on the number of accounts that watched its top 10 movies and series based on the number of accounts that watched at least two minutes from the title in the first 28 days it was on Netflix.

The first season of Bridgerton led its list of best series with 82 million accounts having seen the title, followed by the first part of Lupine and The witcher, with 76 million accounts each viewed. Extraction topped its list of best movies with 99 million accounts, followed by Bird box with 89 million accounts and Spenser Confidential with 85 million.

Image: Code 2021

A second slide ranked Netflix’s 10 best movies and series based on their total viewing hours during their first 28 days on the service. Bridgerton still at the top of its list of series with 625 million hours of viewing. The fourth installment of Money theft followed with 619 million, followed by the third season of Strange things with 582 million hours of viewing. Bird box led its list of the most popular movies on a metric basis, with 282 million hours watched. Extraction climbed to second place with 231 million viewing hours, while Irish took third place with 215 million viewing hours.

“We are trying to be more transparent with the market, the talent and everyone,” Sarandos said. “It’s a big black box for everyone.”

Image: Code 2021

The decision to share the figure comes at a key time for streaming creatives and talent. Services at all levels have traditionally offered limited information on how titles perform on their platforms, an issue that has become a point of frustration in a rapidly evolving entertainment space that has seen even highly anticipated titles aimed at consumers. theaters are heading straight for streaming services – or debuting as hybrid versions.

But the numbers also show that there are many ways to define a “hit”. Netflix data was tracked based on the total number of hours viewed and the time viewers spent watching a title in its first month on the service. Talent and production companies, however, might be more interested in the number of times a title has been viewed from start to finish, or the total number of people – not just accounts – who watch their shows. . Ultimately, without a unified standard across services for what these metrics of success look like, streamers still play a lot by their own individual rules.