Netflix changes its viewing metrics for the top 10 lists

The streaming giant Netflix shows the top 10 shows and films on its app that help viewers to understand what is currently popular. However, the viewing metrics which decides the top 10 has often been debated. And now, Netflix has recently announced that it will change how it measures its top 10 lists. 

In its third quarter, the OTT platform announced that it is changing how it reports viewing metrics. It will supplement the top 10 lists with a website that will show the top titles in more than 90 countries. The titles will be ranked as per the total number of hours spent viewing a given title than its earlier metrics of 2-minute viewing. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix has said that it is hiring an accounting firm to review its data metrics and it will publish the report next year. 

The top 10 list on Netflix, as earlier, will be updated every day. The new website will post the top 10 titles every Tuesday, on a weekly basis sharing insights into the total viewing hours for the previous week. It will also show the top four global titles, both English and non-English language series and films, and the top 10 titles in each country. The global lists will have hours viewed for each title while the local top 10 list will only be rankings and will not feature hours viewed for each title.

Announcing the change, VP content strategy, planning and analysis for Netflix, Pablo Perez De Rosso had written in a blog that the streamer believes a title's popularity can be better measured by hours viewed and overall member satisfaction. He also wrote: “In addition, hours viewed mirrors the way third parties measure popularity, encompasses rewatch … and can be consistently measured across different companies.”

As of November 8-14, the top 10 lists feature film Red Notice as No. 1. The film starring Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson has broken the record of creating the biggest opening day for any Netflix film. It has clocked almost 149 million hours of viewing time worldwide. The most popular series has been Squid Game which had over 1.6 billion hours of viewing for its first season and the most popular film on the streamer is Sandra Bullock's Bird Box. The adventure thriller film has been viewed for 282 million viewing hours. 

The top 10 supplementary websites, apart from sharing top 10 lists of more than 90 countries, will also feature the most popular movies and series of all time. Squid Game is currently leading the rest on the list of top series on Netflix, which is followed by Bridgerton. Bridgerton has clocked 625 million hours of viewing across the globe.

The change in measuring engagement with a title is said to bring in more data transparency for the platform even though Netflix and other streamers are said to collect a lot of information, which are never shared. This 'top secret' information includes the number of users who complete a particular show or film and if a title promotes subscriptions or helps retain the existing users. The spokesperson shared why the streamer does not share completion rates for its series and films. He wrote: “We believe that whether you miss the end of one episode in a 10-hour series (a crying baby or Netflix and chill), or you don’t wait for the Easter egg in the credits sequence, or you rewatch one scene multiple times rather than the whole film, all that viewing should be reflected in the popularity of the title.”