Netflix claims to have 300 million viewers worldwide
David Farnor | On 27, Oct 2017
Earlier this year, Netflix smashed through the 100 million customer mark, as people around the world subscribe to the VOD service. The streaming giant’s actual audience, though, may be as much as three times that.
Speaking to BusinessInsider about Stranger Things Seasons, Netflix VP of Product Innovation Todd Yellin revealed that Netflix has “north of 300 million people” that it counts as viewers, thanks to the individual users sharing accounts and families within households watching programmes together.
It’s a huge number, and exactly the kind of figure that has helped the company’s stock to soar repeatedly in recent years, recently hitting a new high of over $200 following its most recent earnings report.
Yellin revealed that the service has become increasingly targeted and customised to groups within that overall population: there are now approximately 2,000 “taste communities” within its 100 million-strong userbase, broken down to those who prefer comedies, those who prefer scarier titles, and so on. That, in turn, drives how they present shows and films to each user account, with thumbnail choice within the menus altered and tweaked to find the most relevant audience.
Device usage varies too, although 65 per cent of viewing now tends to be on a TV screen, compared to 20 per cent on a mobile device and 15 per cent on a computer. For more cinematic titles, such as Stranger Things, TV and computer viewing tends to rise and mobile viewing declines.
The result has helped to build a global userbase that rivals traditional broadcasters, with the first season of the retro horror series even watched by one person in Antartica, according to Yellin. What does that tell them about Season 2? Canada is likely to be one of the most active streaming markets: the first season went viral north of the US border the fastest, according to Netflix’s data.