We just wrote about how difficult it can be to standardize video performance across platforms and streaming services. Netflix infamously once counted a user watching a TV show or movie for only two minutes as a “view,” and though it’s since moved away from that measurement, the memory remains as an example of how streaming services can set their own engagement metrics based on arbitrary definitions that have no cross-platform correlation.
Nielsen does standardize things somewhat, offering TV, streaming, and YouTube analytics based on watch hours and # of users who tune in. But, as Variety points out, because Netflix has so many subscribers (282 million, currently), when companies like Nielsen judge its performance based on how many people watch a show, that figure tends to dwarf other streamers, and makes their own viewership accomplishments look pithy.
It’s like comparing a top-performing MrBeast video against a video from a smaller channel: MrBeast has 326 million subscribers and his videos regularly net 150+ million views within their first 14 days on the platform. A channel with 5 million subscribers might upload a video that gets 8 or 10 million views in the same time period. Both videos are successful when judged by their relative audience sizes–but stacking them up next to each other can be unfair, since the smaller channel has no chance to compete with MrBeast’s behemoth content machine.
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That’s the approach consulting company Owl & Co. took when designing its new “in-universe ratings,” which weight viewership from all popular streaming services by subscriber numbers to judge the performance of their TV shows against one another. (Owl & Co. founder Hernan Lopez told Variety calling them “in-universe ratings” is a nod to Nielsen’s measurement of the same name for cable TV.)
Using each platform’s reported or estimated subscriber base size plus U.S. viewership data from analytics company Luminate, Owl & Co. assigns a score to original content produced by Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and more.
The score takes into account what percentage of services’ total subscribers are watching shows–so if 20% of Netflix’s 326 million subscribers and 20% of Peacock’s 33 million subscribers watched new shows on each of those platforms during one particular month, that viewership would be given the same score.
With this announcement, Owl & Co. debuted its first set of in-universe ratings, and even with weighting, Netflix dominated the field. Its sex podcaster comedy series Nobody Wants This snagged an in-universe rating of 20.4, which means 20.4% of its total subscriber based watched the show during that month. It beat out Paramount+’s mafia series Tulsa King by nearly 4 points.
Here are Owl & Co.’s top 20 shows for October:
In addition to allowing streaming services to be judged against one another, Owl & Co.’s measurement provides some context for compensation, too: Lopez told Variety that the 20.4 rating for Nobody Wants This means the show’s writers are almost certain to qualify for the success bonus the Writer’s Guild of America secured during the strike last year, since it was watched by more than 20% of Netflix’s U.S. subscriber base within its first 90 days of release.
With Owl & Co. planning to continue releasing monthly ratings, we’ll have a better idea than ever of how many people are watching streaming shows–and what sort of competition these services all pose for one another.
