While traditional television networks have always been subject to scrutiny of the number of viewers who watched their series and programs through audience measurement companies, Streaming platforms have worked since their emergence from the opacity of not revealing their figures. Netflix began by sharing some data in its presentations to shareholders and subsequently both it and other competitors have incorporated announcements via press release, but always in a timely manner and when it has been convenient for them to have specific data to draw on.
This was the case until three years ago, when Netflix took a step towards transparency and launched the website where we can weekly see what your ten most viewed contents are globally in the four categories of Anglo-Saxon/non-English speaking films/series. First, with the number of hours watched as a metric and, from this year, focusing more on views, that is, the number of hours watched divided by the duration of the title. It is an exercise in greater clarity than that of its competitors, whose successes or failures we can only measure according to the tops offered by the Nielsen measurement company.
In any case, when we get our hands on the data of how many people have watched a series streaming, it is still somewhat blurred, since we only know a total. For example, we can know that the series ‘The Gentlemen’, released last March, accumulated 69,500,000 million views, but not how many viewers started the series and made it to the end or got bored along the way. This, which we could call the “completion rate”, is the real key to assessing the success or failure of a product: if many people give a series a chance, but do not finish it, it will mean not only that they did not like it but that There will not be a receptive audience for a next season.
However, this data that Netflix does not reveal is studied by a British consultancy called Digital i, which has prepared a report on the matter (shared by Whats On Netflix) on the performance of the releases so far this year. This points out that the series that most users completed in 2024 was not fiction, but a documentary, ‘Kidnapping Nightmare in California’, with a 72% completion rate. The second place was a fiction, ‘Deceptions’, with a completion rate of 68%, followed by ‘The Gentlemen’ with 63%. Below is the list of the year’s releases and their completion rate:
- ‘Kidnapping nightmare in California’ – 72%
- ‘Deception’ – 68%
- ‘The Gentlemen’ – 63%
- ‘Berlin’ – 58%
- ‘Griselda’ – 58%
- ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ – 55%
- ‘The three-body problem’ – 52%
- ‘Always the same day’ – 49%
- ‘The Sun Brothers’ – 44%
- ‘Alexander the Great: The Creation of a God’ – 33%
- ‘Boy eats universe’ – 38%
These data give us an idea of where is the renewal/cancellation threshold for Netflix: ‘The Sun Brothers’, with a completion rate of 44%, was cancelled, while both ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ and ‘The Three Body Trouble’ have been renewed but already announcing when they will end. The stupendous completion rate of ‘Deceptions’, for its part, demonstrates why Netflix continues to produce series based on Harlan Coben novels like hotcakes.
It is important to note, however, that the completion rate is not the only metric to take into account when talking about renewal or cancellation, although it is a very important one, since it is taken into account. the total number of viewers or the budget of a fiction. For example, ‘Hearstopper’ had a relatively low number of viewers, but a very high completion rate (73%, the second highest in the history of the platform) and it is not a particularly expensive series.
Below, completion data from other titles on the platform to compare:
- ‘The squid game’ – 87%
- ‘Heartstopper’ – 73%
- ‘Love, Death, and Robots’ – 67%
- ‘Arcane’ – 60%
- ‘Unmatched’ – 59%
- ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ – 56%
- ‘Do you know who it is?’ – 54%
- ‘DAHMER’ – 45%
- ‘Resident Evil’ – 45%
- ‘The first death’ – 44%
- ‘Who is Anna?’ – 42%
- ‘The Irregulars’ – 41%
- ‘Mo’ – 40%
It is striking here that two hits as massive as ‘DAHMER’ and ‘Who is Anna?’ are below the 50% completion rate, while apparently minority products such as ‘Love, Death, and Robots’ or ‘Arcane’ manage to maintain such loyal viewers. As we said, It’s not all about reaching a giant audience, but reaching the finish line.
I was born on Wisteria Lane, I was roommates with Hannah Horvath, and ‘Chicago’ drove me crazy because Roxie Hart is me. I have a sharp tongue, but, as Lola Flores said, “they had to give me a subsidy for joy.”
