Netflix is scheduled to release its next earnings report on Monday after closing bell, and investors are anxious to find out how the streaming video giant’s growth is trending. Data from a third party indicates that almost 100 million people used Netflix at least once last month, giving it a net reach of 39.2% in the U.S. The company is trouncing Hulu, which has a reach of only 11.13% last month.
However, it seems that viewers break up their viewing into very small chunks and, on average, spend less than 2 hours a month watching Netflix.
Netflix users don’t spend much time on it
Verto Analytics found that last month, 97.3 million people used Netflix at least once just in the U.S. alone. On a daily basis, 13.2 million Americans watch the company’s service, and based on this number, Verto assigns a “Stickiness Factor” of 14%. The firm pegs Hulu’s stickiness at 13%. Verto computes its “stickiness factor” by comparing “daily users with monthly users to reflect the active, loyal, and engaged part of the audience. The higher the stickiness, the bigger the share of daily users versus the monthly users is.”
One metric we found particularly interesting is that Verto said the average Netflix user supposedly spends only 1.8 hours per month watching videos on it, with the average session lasting only 11 minutes. The firm emphasizes that a single movie might be watched over multiple sessions, but it seems like these numbers are extremely small, particularly when “binge watching” TV shows is supposed to be so common.
But whatever the case, we should get more updated official numbers from Netflix management on Monday when the company releases its next earnings report. Of course what’s most important for the company is that people pay for it, so it may not matter if they spend only 11 minutes at a time watching content.
Tablet users spend more time
Verto reports that the PC is still the device that’s used the most often to access Netflix’s service as 68.6 million users logged on using a PC. In second place was the smartphone with 24.3 million, while 21.7 million people used tablets to watch Netflix.
Although tablets were in third place in terms of the number of people using them to watch the service, the average time spent per tablet user is higher than it is for the other two devices. The average tablet user watches 3.2 hours of TV per month, compared to smartphone users’ 2 hours and less than 1 hour for PC users. This could be why the overall time spent is skewed to the low side, but still, the numbers seem small.
“One of the things were I would expect stronger results are the mobile screens – tablets and smartphones,” Verto Analytics CEO Dr. Hannu Verkasalo, P.h.D opined. “Netflix is still driven by PC and smart TV audiences – can they penetrate more into the consumer’s evening prime time for example with tablets, in the future? The other thing to watch in the future is the growth outside of the U.S. market. The U.S. is their home base and strong market, but can they replicate this in other countries?”
Verto also found that men and women like Netflix just about equally, with viewership consisting of 48% men and 52% women. The firm notes that this is pretty close to the overall distribution of online users as women are 51.6% of online users. In terms of generations, 34% of Millennials, 24% are Generation X, 31% are Baby Boomers, and 11% are Silents.
