Nielsen Household

[jp10558]

No surprise that streaming services have increased at the expense of cable and broadcast TV
And those people that use "sharing" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent and a VPN would not even register on the Nielsen ratings - Sacré Bleu !

I'm not sure those people matter to the makers or distributors though as they're not paying. I suppose same as if you shared a Netflix password back in the day or always watch your TV down at the bar or a friends house or something.

 

[Brett]

I'm not sure those people matter to the makers or distributors though as they're not paying. I suppose same as if you shared a Netflix password back in the day or always watch your TV down at the bar or a friends house or something.

yes, it was just an example of TV viewers not counted by Nielsen - somewhat similar to internet sites like https://the.buffstream.io
But I suppose anyone not keeping a Nielsen diary isn't technically counted except statistically, maybe it only matters to advertisers or those funding the programs

 

[1Kflyerguy]

I'm not sure those people matter to the makers or distributors, though, as they're not paying. I suppose it's the same as if you shared a Netflix password back in the day or always watched your TV down at the bar or a friend's house or something.

Companies like Netflix can tell if you are sharing a password, traveling, etc., based on your IP address and machine ID. I work for a large cloud-based software company, and we can definitely detect PW sharing if you are using your phone, laptop, VPN, etc.

 

[stmartinfan]

We’re thinking we'll sign on. It's all electronic now, so pretty simply and kind of intriguing to know we can affect in a tiny way what's on TV. We can quit at any time so can always drop out if it's a pain.

 

[jp10558]

Companies like Netflix can tell if you are sharing a password, traveling, etc., based on your IP address and machine ID. I work for a large cloud-based software company, and we can definitely detect PW sharing if you are using your phone, laptop, VPN, etc.

I meant back when they tacitly allowed it - I don't know if Netflix would (or ought to really) count what the "freeloaders" watched - it seems to me like the important part is what the paying subscriber watched... Now in a family plan or whatever obviously the kids will bug the parents to keep the stream if they like some show no matter what the parents feel, but my random friend from college would drop it if they specifically weren't getting value no matter how much I said I loved it - they'd tell me to subscribe my damn self then. That's more my point.

I'm not implying Netflix couldn't detect password sharing.

 

[1Kflyerguy]

I meant back when they tacitly allowed it - I don't know if Netflix would (or ought to really) count what the "freeloaders" watched - it seems to me like the important part is what the paying subscriber watched... Now in a family plan or whatever obviously the kids will bug the parents to keep the stream if they like some show no matter what the parents feel, but my random friend from college would drop it if they specifically weren't getting value no matter how much I said I loved it - they'd tell me to subscribe my damn self then. That's more my point.

I'm not implying Netflix couldn't detect password sharing.

Got it on the PW sharing.

And I agree with what you say about subscriptions, the person paying is the most important. However, they also care about the number of viewers for each show or movie. Now that most streaming services include ads, the more people watch, the more they can charge. The number of viewers, paying or not, also impacts the royalties they pay the producers of the content and the bragging rights of popular shows.

For a while, Netflix used a very short measure of viewership, something like if you watched for one or two minutes, it counted as watched. I believe they increased the time required a bit, but it's still pretty short. Back when movies were mostly in the theater, it would be a failure if people walked out after 15 mins. Now Netflix can claim 1Kflyerguy watched four movies in an hour...

 

[jp10558]

Got it on the PW sharing.

And I agree with what you say about subscriptions, the person paying is the most important. However, they also care about the number of viewers for each show or movie. Now that most streaming services include ads, the more people watch, the more they can charge.

The number of viewers, paying or not, also impacts the royalties they pay the producers of the content and the bragging rights of popular shows.

And this goes back to my thought where Nielsen would be useful - I kind of doubt the advertisers want to just take Neflix's word for the watch numbers on their ads. Same for the producers looking for royalties. Kind of like third party audit of results?

For a while, Netflix used a very short measure of viewership, something like if you watched for one or two minutes, it counted as watched. I believe they increased the time required a bit, but it's still pretty short. Back when movies were mostly in the theater, it would be a failure if people walked out after 15 mins. Now Netflix can claim 1Kflyerguy watched four movies in an hour...

Yea, I recall Netflix has played with those values quite a bit over the years - when I originally heard about it, probably 10+ years ago, Netflix used to not count a watch till something like 80% - basically it wasn't very controversial for anyone to say that's close enough to a watch, especially with some of the long credits sequences etc...

Then they realized for "bragging rights" they could claim something like 3 minutes as "a watch". This massively boosted their numbers (and this was pre ads IIRC still, so really only IDK faked out Netflix themselves??) but some parts of the internet cried foul on that - for pretty good reasons IMHO. I guess the advertisers and others pressured Netflix enough that they increased it to 15 minutes like you said.

Personally, I preferred the "original" high percentage based, cause while maybe you count 15 minutes of an Anime episode a watch (if you skip the OP, EP, last time on, next time on for a 22min ep, there's probably 15 min of new content at best)... as you point out it's not anything near a watch of the latest 2hr movie!