Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX) gave itself a pat on the back after releasing the first of its biannual What We Watched reports, calling it a “big step forward for Netflix and our industry”.
Collating data from January to June, the glorified Excel spreadsheet revealed to us that The Night Agent: Season 1 attracted 812,100,000 viewing hours since its 23 March release date, making it the most-watched show on the platform in the first half of the year.
Ginny & Georgia, The Glory, Wednesday and Queen Charlotte followed close behind with more than 500 million hours watched each.
Big numbers though they are, they are pointless without any true comparatives to measure against.
As a metric, ‘hours watched’ is heavily skewed by show/season/movie length, with an undeniable bias towards early-year releases.
Netflix, for its part, admitted that hours watched should “not be made for direct comparisons” and that “longer runtimes don’t make for more successful shows”.
According to vice president Lauren Smith, it’s “all about a story’s ability to delight and hold its audience”.
Sounds twee, but she isn’t wrong. As long as memberships keep being renewed because subscribers like the content, Netflix is unlikely to care what per-user hours watched are, especially since advertising revenues continue to “not be material to our business in 2023”.
Which beggars the question: What’s the point of disclosing hours watched at all?
Despite its flaws, “the most effective way to measure engagement is view hours”, said chief executive Ted Sarandos.
Why? “It’s easy to understand, it mirrors third parties like Nielson in the US (and) it makes Netflix very easy to compare to other streaming services.”
This would be true if Netflix’s competitors played ball. But The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:NYSE:DIS) does not disclose viewership data for its Disney+ streaming service.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Prime streaming figures are also a source of mystery. This has benefitted Amazon Inc in the past, allowing it to ignore speculation that the $1 billion Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series was a massive flop.
Netflix points to Nielson data showing Netflix’s dominance over the competition, but this data is severely limited- Nielsen can only track US viewing through connected television sets, and not through laptops, phones and the like.
Credit: Netflix
Nonetheless, there is a good chance that Netflix truly does eclipse Disney+, particularly given the latter’s propensity for generic Marvel content and poor rehashes of beloved Disney classics.
There is also a good chance that hours watched on Netflix eclipse Amazon Prime too; there’s just no way of knowing for sure without comparative data.