Yahoo News Are ratings for Netflix shows about to be revealed?
Netflix are famously elusive when it comes to revealing the ratings for their shows.
However, market research company Nielsen are now claiming that they can get the data on the streaming giant, as part of a new system for measuring audience data available for VOD subscription platforms generally.
The firm revealed that A&E Networks, Disney ABC Television Group, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal and Warner Brothers are among those to have signed up to receive the data.
And although the system will take data from various VOD platforms, Nielsen said that the effort was aimed mainly at measuring Netflix activity.
"It is clearly the largest in the industry, and the one in which most of our clients said they don't have transparency," Megan Clarken, a Nielsen executive, told Variety.
"There are about 12,000 shows that appear on Netflix that have not been measured in the past. This provides measurement across some 12,000 of those assets, and we will extend it to the SVOD services that are not measured today."
Netflix said that they are not taking part in the effort, however, explaining in a statement: "The data that Nielsen is reporting is not accurate, not even close, and does not reflect the viewing of these shows on Netflix."
Nielsen's new system partly involves getting networks to put a "tag" in pieces of content, though it is unclear whether that will happen with shows viewed through Netflix.
This isn't the first time that Netflix have refused to give away their ratings, its chief executive Reed Hastings explaining last year that "it's competitive information. It tells HBO what kind of shows to produce.
"Because we don't have advertising chopping up the content, we are under a whole different model where we get the freedom to not compare all the shows and rank all the shows. Because it kind of doesn't matter what everyone else loves the most, it matters what you or I love the most."
Viewing figures are largely meaningless to the streaming giant, as it is a subscription service, and what matters more to them is that people are talking about the shows and they get through via word of mouth.
Still, it would be nice to know how many people are actually watching the likes of Stranger Things, House of Cards and The Crown.
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