About a month ago, Netflix bestowed upon the world part two of its What We Watched report. This installation includes data from the second half of 2023, organized with some additional information that wasn’t there in the first drop. Here are some of our observations.
Shorter content is more popular than previous data showed
In the first report – which we covered here – Netflix only released Total Hours viewed by Title, so we could only see how many hours viewers spent watching any given title. In addition, movies and TV series weren’t separated – everything was in the same bucket.
In this new report, though, Netflix has broken out movies and series, and has released data on Total Views AND Total Hours. So we’re now able to see how many times each title has been watched, rather than just how much time viewers have spent watching it.
This gives us a lot more visibility into viewing trends – namely, it allows us to better understand how many times shorter content (like films) are watched. If we can only see hours viewed, observable trends are going to be skewed in favor of TV series, because a TV series obviously has a lot more hours of content to watch. But looking at views gives us a much clearer picture of how miniseries and movies are performing.
And it turns out that people watch a lot of movies. The conventional wisdom is that people turn on Netflix for the TV shows – whether it’s new content like the live-action adaptation of One Piece (#8 most viewed) or comfort, nostalgic library content like Suits (#75 most viewed), but outside of One Piece, the top 15 content by total views were all films.
Stars bring in viewers
This report also breaks out TV and films, so we can see them separately and take note of some of the success Netflix’s most-watched films had in the second half of 2023.
Leave The World Behind (#1 most viewed) was Netflix’s most-watched piece of content with 121 million views, and was Netflix’s fifth-most-watched film of all time. Leo (#3 most viewed) drove 96 million views, making it Netflix’s biggest animated film to date. Both Leave The World Behind and Leo were launched on the platform in November, so it’s even more impressive they were able to accrue the number of views they did in a relatively short period of time! Netflix’s big Oscar-bait film of the year – Bradley Cooper’s Maestro – came in with much lower viewership, at #738 most viewed. That said, Maestro was only released to Netflix on December 20, so it only had twelve full days of being on the platform for this report. Plus, films that court awards usually aren’t expected to have massive box office numbers.
In our breakdown of the first half of the year, we mentioned how within the top 10 performing films on Netflix, eight featured international superstars. The same trend held true in this report – nine of the top 10 films were helmed by stars, with films fronted by Julia Roberts, Gal Gadot, Justin Timberlake, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Garner. And Jennifer Lopez’s The Mother, which was the only film in the top 15 of Netflix’s first-half of 2023 rankings, netted another 25 million views (#80 most viewed) to be the most-watched Netflix film of 2023.
Netflix Originals continued to attract eyeballs
In the first half of 2023, we saw that 13 of the top 15 titles on Netflix were Netflix Originals. However, because we could only see Hours Viewed, 12 of those titles were TV shows. In the second half, 12 of the top 15 titles were also Originals – but now that we can see Total Views, we can see that 11 of those 12 are films.
What were the top three titles that weren’t Netflix Originals? First, it was the Jackie Chan/John Cena action film Hidden Strike (#7 most viewed), which remained the #1 film on the platform for two weeks after its release in July. The other two cater to a different audience: parents and kids! The Boss Baby (#11 most viewed) and Paw Patrol: The Movie (#13 most viewed) were both the other non-Netflix originals among the most-watched, showing that Netflix’s investment in family-focused library content paid off in terms of generating total views. Notably, these two pieces of content were the only two that weren’t released in 2023 – The Boss Baby was released in 2017, and Paw Patrol: The Movie was released in 2021.
The global audience is still growing - for TV
In the first half of 2023, 30% of all viewing came from non-English content. In the second half, the trend continues, with nearly a third of all viewing came from non-English content.
Looking at the top 15 titles in the second half of the year, only one is not in English. However, three of the top 15 TV shows are non-English, and nearly half of the top 15 TV shows are produced outside the United States. 9% of all viewing was for Korean-language content, 7% of all viewing was for Spanish-language content, and 5% of all viewing was for Japanese-language content. Dear Child (#16 most viewed) from Germany was the most-watched foreign-language content.
Doubling down on what works
One of the most popular films for Netflix was The Boss Baby (#11 most viewed), which was released in 2017 and was not a Netflix original. But starting several years ago, Netflix did develop original content based on the franchise – with two television shows. The Boss Baby: Back in Business had four seasons, debuting in 2018, while The Boss Baby: Back in the Crib debuted in 2022 and aired its final season in 2023. While the shows are no longer airing new episodes on Netflix, the addition of the initial film allows families to have a “hub” of the franchise content without having to leave the Netflix app.
Netflix’s most-watched television show of the second half of 2023, One Piece, was a live-action adaptation of a popular anime, and there was a coattails effect – the introduction of the new show doubled the previous numbers of the original television series and films. Similarly, Squid Game’s reality TV show spin-off Squid Game: The Challenge (#53 most viewed) helped increase views of the original Squid Game (#227 most viewed).
Like we saw in the first half of the year, new seasons drove performance of previous seasons of television shows as well. Lupin: Part 3 (#19 most viewed) led to coattails effect for Lupin: Part 1 (#100 most viewed), and we saw similar things for Sweet Magnolias: Season 3 (#113 most viewed) → Season 1 (#671 most viewed) and Virgin River: Season 5 (#43 most viewed) → Season 1 (#457 most viewed).
Content for all ages
The inclusion of the Total Views metric makes it really clear how much content for kids and families drive engagement for Netflix. With Total Views, we can see that 15% of all viewing is spent on kids and family content. And of the top 15 titles, four are focused on kids and families, while three are animated. If we expand to look at the top 20 titles, five are focused on kids and families. Notably, all of these titles are movies, and Netflix’s> top-ever animated film, Leo (#3 most viewed), which premiered in November, drove over 171 hours of engagement.
It’s not just kids, though! The top-watched TV show – the live-action adaptation of One Piece (#8 most viewed) – was primarily targeted towards teenagers, just like two of the top five TV shows from the first half of the year – Ginny and Georgia: Season 2 (#2 most viewed in the first half of 2023) and Wednesday: Season 1 (#4 most viewed in the first half of 2023). This increased emphasis on family-friendly content for all ages could be a response to Disney+, which is understandably very strong on family entertainment.
The biggest takeaway from the second half of the year – movies play a much bigger role in Netflix viewing than the first report showed. The addition of Total Views is a real game changer, and gives us a much more nuanced view of what’s popular with Netflix viewers. Other trends from the first half of 2023 – namely, the effectiveness of stars, and the popularity of original content – held steady for the rest of the year. It’ll be interesting to see how these trends continue to develop through 2024.
Wondering how these trends might affect your SVOD? Let’s talk.
The biggest takeaway from the second half of the year - movies play a much bigger role in Netflix viewing than the first report showed.
