Netflix’s first engagement report, ‘What We Watched,’ is the most comprehensive look at what people watch on Netflix.
Netflix will start publishing new reports twice a year detailing the most popular movies and shows on its platform. The first report was released today and details the most watched content between January 2023. It’s the best look at the amount of people watching Netflix’s massive library.
The “What We Saw: A Netflix Engagement Report”, will track three metrics, including hours watched, availability of a show globally, and the release date. The Night Agent’s first series topped the list in this report with 812,000,000 hours viewed. Ginny & Georgia second season (665,1,000,000 hours viewed), The Glory first season (622,8,000,000 hours viewed), the Wednesday first season (507,7,000,000 hours viewed), Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story’s (503,000,000 hours viewed) were also on the list. The full list includes more than 18,000 titles. Content is only included if more than 50,000 viewing hours have been logged.
Here is the link to download the report as a.xlsx.
Netflix offers weekly top 10 lists. This new report provides a much broader view of Netflix’s viewing data. The recent Writers Guild of America’s strike was over streaming data. The new contract now requires Hollywood studios to share streaming data with them.
Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, did not say in a conference call with journalists that this company was releasing these data due to this new requirement for transparency. However, he did acknowledge that Netflix’s strategy on how it shares its data has evolved over time.
He says that in the early days it was not in our best interest to be so transparent, as we were still building a brand new business. We needed time to learn. He also said that the creators were happy with this because it removed pressure from the “overnight rating” model or weekend box-office numbers.
Sarandos explains that “the unintended consequences of not being transparent about our engagement were an atmosphere of mistrust with producers and creators over time about what was going on Netflix.” Sarandos believes that sharing more data creates a “better environment” for everyone involved, including the guild, the creators, the producers and the press.
Sarandos explained that Netflix’s main metric is the number of hours watched. It’s simple to understand. It is similar to third parties in the US, like Nielsen. Netflix is very easy to compare with other streaming services,” says he.
We do not know if any other streaming services are going to be as open about their streaming data. I have asked Amazon, Apple (Apple TV Plus), Disney and NBCUniversal. Discovery (Max). If you were wondering how popular Wednesday was on Netflix, you can now see it for yourself.