How Do Streamers Calculate Their Viewer Numbers?
By Movieguide® Contributor
In today’s streaming world, it can be hard to figure out how ratings stats are being calculated — here’s the rundown on the many different ways streaming services are drawing up their viewership numbers.
“It is more chaotic than it’s ever been,” George Ivie, chief executive of the Media Rating Council, told The New York Times of calculating ratings.
Many streamers don’t release their numbers, which leaves ratings companies like Nielsen, Luminate and Parrot Analytics to guess at how many viewers they’re pulling in. Additionally, many platforms release their own stats but don’t disclose how they are calculating the numbers, leaving some to wonder how credible their information is.
For example, Netflix shows subscribers a Top 10 lineup of the current most popular shows and movies on the platform. However, the company doesn’t attach any numbers to the rankings, so it’s unclear how many people are really watching.
READ MORE: WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BUY INTO NETFLIX’S STREAMING NUBERS
When it comes to calculating ratings for a streamed show or movie, many platforms choose to use the “views” system. Of course, it seems like every streamer has a different definition of a “view.”
Some add up the total number of hours/minutes viewed on a show or movie, while others tally up the number of times it has been streamed.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix defines a view as the “total time spent watching a movie or season of a TV series, divided by the running time.”
Other methods focus more on a piece of content’s timeline. Some will advertise that they drew in X amount of viewers in the series’ first three days on the platform, while others look at a viewer’s “binge rate” — “the percentage of streaming viewers who watch the episodes of TV series in rapid succession, relative to all of that title’s viewers,” per TV Insider.
Despite all these different numbers being published, TV Insider wrote that “streaming viewership data remains scarce.” Since streamers release (or don’t release) their own statistics, it’s almost impossible for third-party organizations to confirm these numbers.
READ MORE: WHY STUDIOS ARE KEEPING STREAMING NUMBERS UNDER WRAPS
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