Netflix has taken another step towards the transparency of its figures. The streaming platform used to show the 10 most viewed titles on its cover, a classification it did by counting views of at least two minutes in length. Now the company has changed its metric, in addition to launching a website to reveal its weekly top 10.
With this new metric, Netflix abandons the controversial "at least two minutes of viewing" that were used to give a series or movie as seen by one of their accounts and, according to reports, now "rankings will now be based on the total number of hours watched for a given title, rather than Netflix’s previous standard of a two-minute sample". Pablo Perez De Rosso, Vice President of Content Strategy, Planning and Analysis, has stated that "measuring engagement by hours viewed is a strong indicator of the popularity of a title, as well as overall subscriber satisfaction".
In addition to changing its measurement method, the company has launched a website where it collects its top 10 weekly. "Every Tuesday we publish four global Top 10 lists for movies and TV: Cinema (English), TV (English), Cinema (non-English) and TV (non-English). These lists rank titles based on weekly hours viewed – the total number of hours our worldwide members watched of each title from Monday to Sunday of the previous week"explains the page.
It should be noted that Netflix considers each season of a series as a title in itself. In addition, users can check how many weeks a production has been in the top 10. The web allows you to personalize the search for information, choosing the country and consulting previous weeks. Data starts as of June 28, 2021.
"Finally, we provided a list of the 10 most popular Netflix movies and TV series in each of the four categories based on the hours that each title was watched during its first 28 days. For Netflix-branded titles in some countries, but not others, we include all hours viewed", the company advances.
For example, in Spain, in the week of November 8 to 14, the most watched film is Red Alert, while the most popular series is Where is Marta ?. As the website points out, the documentary on the disappearance of Marta del Castillo has been in the top 10 for two weeks and it is the sixth most watched title within the categories of non-English-speaking series.
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