• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, June 3, 2022

A quietly introduced change in how Netflix counts viewing hours has resulted in some series moving onto or rising within its Most Popular rankings.

For the rankings, introduced last November and updated weekly on the Netflix Top 10 site, Netflix counts total hours watched in the first 28 days after the launch of a series or movie.

However, starting May 10, Netflix introduced a change affecting series that are released in two batches or “volumes,” according to CNET. For these series (including ones introduced in years past), Netflix now counts hours watched during the first 28 days of each volume’s availability, effectively giving some series 56 days over two separate periods, or twice as long, to amass views.

Judging from archived screenshots of the Top 10 website, Netflix added two sentences to its methodology statement on May 10, but did not otherwise disclose the change in its Most Popular rankings methodology, according to the report.

Netflix referred CNET to the methodology stated on its site but did not comment on any changes.

The counts for most of Netflix’s shows, including the super-hits “Bridgerton” and “Squid Game,” are unaffected by the change, since their full seasons were released all at once, per Netflix’s dominant practice.

But the change has resulted in huge jumps in watch time for some existing shows with seasons that were released in more than one volume.

Several series “suddenly appeared in Netflix’s top 10 charts or shot to a much higher ranking, with hundreds of millions of hours suddenly added to their counts,” sums up CNET. 

For example, the first five episodes of the final season of hit Spanish thriller “Money Heist” (or “La Casa de Papel”) were released on Sept. 1 last year, and the last five episodes on Dec. 1. After the methodology change in May, the series’ watch time more than doubled, resulting in its first appearance on Netflix’s top 10 most-watched shows of all time, at No. 2.

“Lucifer,” which released half of its fifth season in 2020 and the other half almost a year later, also made the Most Popular rankings for the first time after the rules change — debuting as the seventh most-watched show in any language. Similarly, the latest season of “Ozark” did not make the English-language top 10 based on the count for the 28 days following the release of the first batch of episodes on Jan. 21, but did make the list three weeks after the second batch was released on April 29.

“Stranger Things” needs no special help to make the Most Popular rankings. Season 3, released three years ago, easily did so, and the first seven episodes of Season 4 amassed 286,780,000 hours of watch time in the first three days after their release on May 27.

That broke the premiere weekend record for an English-language Netflix series. The new batch of episodes hit No. 1 in those rankings, and the first three seasons took the No. 3 through 5 positions. The new episodes were also No. 1 in 93 countries. The last two episodes of Season 4 are set for release on July 1.

Still, with a total of 53 more days to accumulate watch time once the last two episodes are released, the new methodology will serve to further pump up the series’ rankings performance.

Questions around how watch hours or other performance metrics are determined will, of course, become significantly more important when Netflix launches an ad-supported version, likely by this year’s fourth quarter.

And while marketers are more than eager for the opportunity to advertise in the generally high-quality, brand-safe content on the world’s largest streamer, buyers will not allow Netflix to continue to “grade its own homework,” Samba TV communications and brand chief Dallas Lawrence noted to CNET.

Watch hours, however clearly defined, are unlikely to suffice for marketers accustomed to viewer-based ratings, demographics and psychographics. "As we enter this new phase, transparency around viewership data is going to be essential, especially on 'closed' platforms" like Netflix,” added Diesel Labs CEO and Co-founder Anjali Midha.