It’s long been impossible to know how many people are actually watching Netflix‘s original and exclusive movies and shows, that is unless Netflix decides to share that information for select titles. And they of course have only been sharing that information when streaming records are broken, but they’re at least now going to be providing a bit more transparency.
The official website Top10.Netflix.com was launched this week, and it will be updated every single Tuesday with “Top 10” viewership rankings in four different categories:
- Top 10 Films (English)
- Top 10 Films (Non-English)
- Top 10 Shows (English)
- Top 10 Shows (Non-English)
The lists will rank titles based on weekly hours viewed, described as “the total number of hours that our members around the world watched each title from Monday to Sunday of the previous week.” The list for November 8-November 14 is now available, with Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead being the only horror film on this week’s list in the #7 spot. The film has been in the top 10 for the past 3 weeks, with 7,620,000 hours viewed from 11/8-11/14. The more recent prequel, Army of Thieves is also on the list at #4, with 20,560,000 hours viewed.
Army of the Dead, we now also know thanks to this new information, is the #8 most popular Netflix movie in the streamer’s history, with 186,540,000 hours watched in the first 28 days.
With 282,020,000 views, Bird Box is still the #1 Netflix Original Movie.
Pablo Perez de Rosso, vice president of content strategy, planning and analysis at Netflix, explains the new approach, “Figuring out how best to measure success in streaming is hard, and there’s no one perfect metric. Traditional measures like box office or share of audience (which was designed to help advertisers understand success on linear TV) aren’t relevant to most streamers, including Netflix. Having looked at the different options, we believe engagement, as measured by hours viewed, is a strong indicator of a title’s popularity, as well as overall member satisfaction, which is important for retention in subscription services.”