Netflix says subscribers spend two hours a day on the platform

Netflix says subscribers spend an average of two hours each day using the platform, while household viewership increased compared to last year, according to the company’s third quarter earnings report released today.

The streamer has had a massive past few months, reporting $9.83 billion in revenue and $2.91 billion in operating income. It also added around 5 million subscribers for a total of 282.7 million globally. Around half of subscribers who signed up for Netflix in the third quarter of 2024 chose the ad-supported plan.

Netflix says it currently makes up just under 10 percent of total TV usage in its biggest countries. However, it believes “there’s a huge opportunity to grow that share” by consistently pushing more quality TV shows and movies. The streamer has a promising slate of content lined up for later this year and into the next, including Squid Game season 2, a final season of Arcane, and an animated Witcher movie.

“Programming for such a large, engaged audience, with so much variety and great quality, is hard,” Netflix’s letter to investors says. “It’s why streaming services which lack our breadth of content are increasingly looking to bundle their offerings… Netflix is already an extraordinary package of series and films (licensed and original), and increasingly games and live events.”

During an earnings call on Thursday, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters confirmed that the platform is planning to roll out the redesign it began testing over the summer. “We’re excited with the progress that we’ve seen there, so we’re polishing it up,” Peters said. “We’re excited to bring that to our subscribers around the world.”

This is one of the last times Netflix will reveal how many subscribers it added during a quarter, as Netflix plans to cut off quarterly counts starting in 2025. As streaming services add other forms of revenue, like advertising and paid sharing, subscriber growth is becoming a less important figure. Despite this, Netflix doesn’t expect ads to become a “primary driver” of revenue growth next year, as it says it’s “scaling faster than our ability to monetize our growing ad inventory.”

In addition to rolling out its $7.99 per month paid sharing add-on last summer, the company has made efforts to dive deeper into live content, with WWE Monday Night Raw coming to the service next year and the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match airing next month. It has also greatly expanded its library of games.

Source: theverge.com