Netflix top series and movie audience 2021

A total of 142 million viewers are reported to have watched the South Korean series 'Squid Game' in Netflix, as of October 2021. Ranking in second came the movie Extraction with 99 million viewers, followed by Bird Box with 89 million viewers.

Netflix viewership measurement

The method of Netflix's measurement of viewership has changed, and now counts viewers who expressed the intention to watch the show and continued watching for as little as two minutes. This is similar to how YouTube video views are measured and further away from traditional calculations of TV ratings and viewers. Netflix has justified the change in its methodology as a way to accommodate all types of content, regardless of length. Citing other media companies such as BBC iPlayer and The New York Times as having similar ranking models, Netflix discloses the viewer counts are approximately 35 percent higher using the new method.

Most viewed Netflix movies and series in the first four weeks of their release worldwide as of October 2021

Characteristic	Number of viewers in millions
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Release date

October 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

all time as of October 2021

Supplementary notes

Netflix previously reported its viewing figures by counting a view as a member watching at least 70 percent of one episode of a series, or 70 percent of a feature film. As of Q4 2019, Netflix measured viewer numbers by tracking the number of viewers who 'chose to watch' a title, i.e. members who watched for as little as two minutes, long enough to suggest that their choice was intentional. Netflix noted that this new metric results in viewer counts approximately 35 percent higher than the previous metric.

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