How is Netflix changing the way it measures viewership?

"SQUID GAME," "Bridgerton" or "Lupin": which one is really the most watched series on Netflix? The streaming giant is shaking things up by changing its ranking system. The days of calculating everything just by number of accounts are over, from now on Netflix will analyze the time you spend in front of your screen.

"Later in the year, we will shift to reporting on hours viewed for our titles rather than the number of accounts that choose to watch them," Netflix revealed in a letter addressed to its shareholders.

It's not surprising that the company is making this change. At the end of September, Netflix unveiled new rankings for its most-watched series and movies, focusing on the number of hours logged. Originally, the streaming giant would rank its content according to the number of accounts that watched at least two minutes of the program during the first 28 days on the platform. A rather imprecise system since a user could decide to not continue their viewing of the program but they would still be counted.

Often criticized for not sharing its audience data, Netflix seems to have decided to change its behavior as well by publishing reports more regularly: "...we will start to release title metrics more regularly outside of our earnings report so our members and the industry can better measure success in the streaming world ," the platform detailed.

A system described as "a slightly better indicator" and one that better reflects the success of the service. For Netflix, this new system better measures subscriber satisfaction as well as allowing the company to compare itself with the same unit of measurement used by television services to gauge audiences. It's a way for Netflix to go up more directly against its competitors like HBO: "It also matches how outside services measure TV viewing and gives proper credit to rewatching."

Recently, regarding Netflix's runaway success "Squid Game," the American giant reported that 89% of subscribers had watched at least 75 minutes of the series while 66% watched it completely during its first 23 days online. In all, more than 1.4 billion hours of the South Korean series have been watched by users.