Despite its ubiquity in the streaming game—“watching Netflix” is a shorthand akin to “Kleenex” for tissues or “Coke” for soda—the service has always been cagey about exactly who is watching what. Finally, it seems the company is embracing a degree of transparency; this week they announced plans to publish “What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report” on a biannual basis. In the press release, Netflix highlights its Top 10 and Most Popular list functions, and touts itself as “[having] provided more information about what people are watching than any other streamer except YouTube” (though that bar isn’t exactly a high one). Netflix has been promising a greater level of transparency for its titles going back more than two years, though it has historically provided minimal specifics on what that would actually look like—so even though “What We Watched” is flawed, it’s still progress.
The first report covers January through June 2023, and is relatively bare bones in its information. The key detail is “Hours viewed,” which includes every original or licensed piece of content watched for more than 50,000 hours. The top titles aren’t shockers–FBI conspiracy drama The Night Agent (812 million hours), which was quickly renewed upon its release in March, the family comedy Ginny & Georgia (665 million hours), South Korean revenge thriller The Glory (623 million hours), the Addams Family spinoff Wednesday (508 million hours), and the acclaimed Bridgerton spinoff Queen Charlotte (503 million hours). Acquired content that ranked highly in the viewership metrics included kids programs like Paw Patrol and CoComelon), the final season of The Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad. Netflix’s strong investment in South Korean content seems to have succeeded, as a number of Korean scripted and reality series clocked in near the top of the list.
In 2022, Vanity Fair posited that Netflix might move away from the pricey prestige pictures it financed in the last few years (The Irishman, Roma, White Noise) due to the financial uncertainties around the streaming ecosystem. The first half of 2023 was unsurprisingly light on these releases from Netflix–most hopeful award contenders aren’t released until the fall or winter–but the movie metrics in “What We Watched” aren’t encouraging for those who hoped places like Netflix would save auteur-driven cinema. The most watched original movie on the list was The Mother, the Jennifer Lopez action vehicle, at 250 million hours. (That’s especially impressive since it wasn’t released until May 12.) Other high performers included sequels to extant IP (Luther: The Fallen Sun, Extraction 2, Murder Mystery 2), and mediocre star-driven comedies (You People, Your Place or Mine). Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, carried over well from its holiday 2022 release, and given Netflix’s gargantuan investment in Rian Johnon’s mystery series, that’s certainly a relief. The report for the latter half of 2023 will contain more relevant data on this front, as Netflix-backed projects like May December and Maestro picked up Golden Globe nominations, but we won’t know the degree that they’ve connected with viewers.
Making this kind of data available within the industry was one of the major sticking points of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and a key victory ratified by the writers’ new contract with the potential for residuals to be paid based on streaming popularity, a departure from how the industry worked prior. But, this kind of consumer-accessible data is something entirely different. In a press conference with the release of this first data set, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos noted that the industry’s “environment of mistrust” was an “unintended consequence of not having more transparent data about our engagement.” As Vulture noted, there’s still a lot to be desired, including key entails like viewership by country or territory, that Sarandos said is unlikely to happen. Last November, Netflix begin its ad-based subscription options, and has announced plans in 2024 for wider sponsorship opportunities and more interactive advertising. Presumably, prospective advertisers were privy to a level of intel greater than the average consumer, but publishing this information widely seems like an attempt to foster goodwill among both viewers and potential advertising clients.
2023 has been a year in flux for the streaming landscape at large and Netflix in particular, with the latter announcing a high-profile restriction on password sharing as well as increased monthly subscription costs in the U.S., U.K., and France. These changes have resulted in growing profits and a bump in overall subscriber count following a period of decline, though there has also been frustration among longtime users about the changes. Hopefully, this step from Netflix will encourage competitors like Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Max to publish more concrete data going forwards.
