Netflix adds view count to their Top 10

Netflix announced today that they have made some changes to their weekly Top 10 by adding a view count. Previously, the Netflix Top 10 list was ranked by hours viewed per title, which they will continue to show, but the list will now be ranked by views.

Netflix views don’t necessarily reflect the number of people watching, but rather the number of hours viewed divided by the total run time of the movie or TV series. Using the recent Extraction 2 as an example, the Chris Hemsworth movie has had 88.38 million hours viewed, which works out to 43 million views when divided by its 122 minute run-time.

“We heard feedback that only providing hours viewed on our Top 10 lists was hard to contextualize, so over the last few months we started to share the views for a good number of our titles (i.e. the number of hours viewed divided by the total run time),” reads a statement from Netflix. “This proved to be a more relatable metric for many people, so starting today, while we will continue to show hours viewed per title, our Top 10 lists will now be ranked by views. We will also extend the qualifying time for our most popular lists from around one month (28 days) to three months (91 days) given that many of our shows and films grow significantly over time.“

Netflix believes that views combined with total hours viewed is a good evolution of the streaming metric because it’s:

• Anchored in engagement — our best measure of member satisfaction and a key driver of retention (which in turn drives our business); 
• Ensures longer titles don’t get an advantage; and 
• Enables third parties to compare the relative impact of movies and series — despite their different run times. 

The result of this tweaking has changed the all-time ranking of some of its highest rated shows. While the first season of Squid Game is still the most-viewed title for any Netflix show, the first season of Wednesday has moved ahead of Stranger Things season four. Wednesday has had 1.72 billion hours viewed, which works out to 252.1 million views, compared to Stranger Things 4 which has 1.84 billion hours viewed but just 140 million views.