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Why is this based on “hours viewed”. That seems to penalize tv shows and shorts. Unless this is meant for Wallstreet to convey hours eyeballs are spent on Net

Why is this based on “hours viewed”. That seems to penalize tv shows and shorts. Unless this is meant for Wallstreet to convey hours eyeballs are spent on Netflix.

pcmaffey 5y ago
Yeah, percentage completed (hrs watched/total hrs) seems a much better indicator of a show’s quality.
the-pigeon 5y ago
I think you hit the nail on the head. This seems to be aimed at investors more than anyone else.
- subsubzero 5y ago
  It seems like hours watched for a subscription service seems useless, there are no ads to catch eyeballs why care how many hours watched if the person is still paying for it? It seems like the perfect netflix user would use the service infrequently but still pay for it.
propogandist 5y ago
seems like a peek into a potential strategy to introduce advertising. Rather than price increases playing ads between streams or "paused" states may be the next monetization play
nawgz 5y ago
TV shows surely have far more content-hours than a movie?
minimaxir 5y ago
Netflix elaborates on this in their blog post: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/new-top-10-on-netflix https://about.netflix.com/en/news/new-top-10-on-netflix > 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. In addition, hours viewed mirrors the way third parties measure popularity, encompasses rewatch (a strong sign of member joy) and can be consistently measured across different companies. Years ago, Netflix got a lot of flak for using "users who saw atleast 5 minutes of a series" as an indication people watched it. Quantifying video performance based on watch time has become more industry standard (especially on social media which loves autoplaying videos) as it accounts for retention.
tylerchr 5y ago
Interesting, I’d have said TV shows have an advantage in this metric. (How many top shows have less than two hours worth of episodes?) On the surface I think the charts show this, as only the most popular English movies are over ~15M hours but virtually all of the TV shows are. Either way, since TV and Films aren’t listed together I’m not sure either one is “penalized” really.

Why is this based on “hours viewed”. That seems to penalize tv shows and shorts. Unless this is meant for Wallstreet to convey hours eyeballs are spent on Netflix.

pcmaffey 5y ago

Yeah, percentage completed (hrs watched/total hrs) seems a much better indicator of a show’s quality.

the-pigeon 5y ago

I think you hit the nail on the head. This seems to be aimed at investors more than anyone else.

subsubzero 5y ago
It seems like hours watched for a subscription service seems useless, there are no ads to catch eyeballs why care how many hours watched if the person is still paying for it? It seems like the perfect netflix user would use the service infrequently but still pay for it.

propogandist 5y ago

seems like a peek into a potential strategy to introduce advertising. Rather than price increases playing ads between streams or "paused" states may be the next monetization play

nawgz 5y ago

TV shows surely have far more content-hours than a movie?

minimaxir 5y ago

Netflix elaborates on this in their blog post: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/new-top-10-on-netflix https://about.netflix.com/en/news/new-top-10-on-netflix > 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. In addition, hours viewed mirrors the way third parties measure popularity, encompasses rewatch (a strong sign of member joy) and can be consistently measured across different companies. Years ago, Netflix got a lot of flak for using "users who saw atleast 5 minutes of a series" as an indication people watched it. Quantifying video performance based on watch time has become more industry standard (especially on social media which loves autoplaying videos) as it accounts for retention.

tylerchr 5y ago

Interesting, I’d have said TV shows have an advantage in this metric. (How many top shows have less than two hours worth of episodes?) On the surface I think the charts show this, as only the most popular English movies are over ~15M hours but virtually all of the TV shows are. Either way, since TV and Films aren’t listed together I’m not sure either one is “penalized” really.