Netflix is making a major shift in how it reports its Top 10 rankings.
Starting today, the streaming giant will provide an estimated viewership for the weekly charts of its top shows and films. This will be estimated by taking the traditional hours viewed they have provided for some time and dividing by the show or film’s total runtime. In addition, Netflix will be extending the window of measurement for the most popular lists for TV and film from 28 days to 91 days.
For example, Season 1 of “Wednesday” has an estimated 252.1 million views based on 1.718 billion hours viewed in the first 61 days of availability divided by its 6 hour, 49 minute runtime. This does not mean that 252 million people finished the series, however, nor does it account for anyone who rewatched within the viewing window. It was reported earlier this year that Netflix has a subscriber base of 232.5 million.
In this week’s Top 10, the film “Extraction 2” pulled in an estimated 43 million views based on 88.38 million hours viewed divided by its runtime of just over two hours. A third film is already in the works. Meanwhile, the final season of “Never Have I Ever” topped the weekly TV chart with 11.5 million views.
Check out the estimated viewership of Netflix’s biggest series and films below.
This represents a significant shift in the opaque world of streaming ratings. No streaming service has provided consistent estimated viewership for their offerings until now, with the exception of Max, which does so only when discussing shows that also air on the linear network HBO, not for any Max originals.
Beyond that, Nielsen provides a weekly streaming ratings breakdown, but those numbers estimate minutes viewed a full month after the week in question. So the most recent Nielsen chart, released on June 15, provided data for the week of May 15-21.
