Netflix charts success by counting “adjusted view share” and “efficiency”

The Future. Leaked documents show just how successful Squid Game was for Netflix, giving the streamer record-breaking multiples in both value and cost-efficiency. With high scores in newly unearthed metrics “adjusted view share” and “efficiency,” it’s possible that Hollywood unions will continue to push for those metrics’ transparency in order to overhaul the creator-residual system for the streaming age.

Giant squid
At this point, everyone and their aunt has seen Netflix’s Korean-language breakout hit, Squid Game. But how successful is the show really?

• According to leaked documents, Bloomberg reports that the show generated a mythic $891.1 million in “impact value.”
• That’s off of a show whose budget was $21.4 million ($2.4 million per episode).
• About 132 million have seen the show since it premiered about a month ago, making it the biggest debut of any show on the streaming service.
• According to Netflix, roughly 89% watched at least 75 minutes of the series, while 66% (87 million) finished the whole thing.

Almost entirely because of Squid Game, Netflix’s shares have popped 7%, valuing the company at $278.1 billion.

Valuable viewers
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty: how does Netflix actually calculate what a show is worth? In a revelation that will send Hollywood creatives and their representatives spinning, Netflix calculates an “adjusted view share” (AVS) for all programming — a score to determine how valuable specific views are to the platform. Newer customers or people who don’t use the platform much who watch a title are considered more valuable because “that suggests those shows are a reason they haven’t cancelled.”

In the case of Squid Game, the show scored 353 points, which is massive when an AVS score of more than 10 is considered high. And because of its cost, the show had an efficiency (another important metric) of 41.7X. For context, just 1X is considered high.

Prepare for everyone to start asking what any given title’s AVS and efficiency score is from here on out.