New Netflix report reveals just how much time we spent on the platform this year

Netflix users consumed nearly 100 billion hours of content on the streaming platform this year, a recent report revealed.

The leading streaming service recently released its first “engagement report” which offers a comprehensive ranking of user activity, spotlighting the most-watched shows and movies based on the total hours invested.

Titled “What We Watched”, the report encompasses over 18,000 titles, accounting for 99% of all Netflix viewing, meticulously listing out what the audience is, and isn’t watching on the platform. The report will include information on viewership trends spanning six months, detailing the Netflix premiere date of each title and indicating its global availability.

While Netflix has released a weekly Top 10 list since 2021—where 60% of all the titles released between January and June of 2023 have found a place—this new report dives deep into the very particular metric of viewership hours.

The Night Agent, a Netflix original series, claimed the highest viewership across all programs on the platform, accumulating over 812 million viewing hours. Meanwhile, The Mother, an action-thriller featuring Jennifer Lopez, emerged as the most-watched movie, boasting 249.9 million viewing hours.

The report also revealed a desire for older titles, as licensed content like Breaking Bad and Gilmore Girls contributed substantial value to both the users and rights holders.

The company also shared that the enthusiasm for non-English shows and movies is growing, with almost 30% of all viewing coming from this section of the platform, reflecting a new trend in consumption patterns, based on viewership data from January to June of 2023.

Nine Indian shows and movies secured spots in the top 1,000 most-watched movies and shows worldwide, an underwhelming number when compared to how widely Netflix titles are marketed in the country and the wide-reaching audience that consumes Indian content.

Rana Naidu, a Telugu language series based on the 2013 American crime drama show Ray Donovan and starring Rana Daggubati and Surveen Chawla topped the list of Indian shows, ranking at the 330th position, amassing an impressive 46.3 million viewing hours.

Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga, a Hindi language heist thriller film that was released directly on Netflix, starring Yami Gautam and Sunny Kaushal, ranked 395th out of all the titles and amassed a total of 41.7 million viewing hours.

Ajay Singh, director of Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga, shared with Press Insider that reports like these act like feedback for the filmmakers and writers involved, apart from the reviews. If the reports are positive then it’s a form of validation whereas if unsatisfactory, these numbers help them to course-correct the content creation.

“Just as box office collection numbers are important for theatrical releases, these numbers are important for the filmmakers whose content is going directly to streaming,” added Singh.

Over the last summer, amid the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strikes, incessant calls were being made to demand more transparency from streaming services to establish new rules for commercial residual payments that are made to writers and filmmakers.

The strikes resulted in satisfactory results for the Hollywood writers and actors and the sharing of this report by Netflix falls in line with the intention of transparency, where streaming platforms are now being compelled to share numbers that have previously been hidden from the public.

Netflix has revealed its commitment to transparency and has become the first streaming platform to do so, by announcing the biannual releases of these updated rankings.