Netflix Added 4.4 Million Subscribers Last Quarter, Surpassing Estimates

It seems sometimes like everyone and their mom has a Netflix subscription, but the streaming giant still has room to grow, it seems, and is continuing to do even better than expected, the company said in a new financial report, which you can check out here.

Netflix gained 4.4 million subscribers throughout its third quarter of 2021, far surpassing the estimated 3.84 million goal they'd set out, and expects to add another 8.5 million subscribers in the fourth quarter. Conservative estimates were the result of a "lighter-than-normal content slate" in the first and second quarters of this year, and the company credits the slew of delayed content that has been rolling out for the impressive numbers.

The company also announced at the same time that it plans to use new metrics when reporting on viewership. Previously, Netflix used confusing metrics, such as considering an episode of a given show watched after just two minutes of viewing time. Netflix will shift to reporting on viewership by hours watched instead of the number of accounts viewing a title. This changes up the company's top rankings a little; by number of accounts, Extraction is the streaming service's top-ranked title with 99 million viewers over Bird Box's 89 million. By hours viewed, though, Bird Box comes in at 282 million hours viewed, versus 231 million hours for Extraction. The two movies both clock in on either side of a two-hour runtime, which puts that 50-million-hour gap into perspective.

The company also updated investors on its burgeoning gaming initiative. The company is testing games in some countries, but stated that "it remains very early days for this initiative." The company highlighted its recent acquisition of game development studio Night School Studio, which previously developed Oxenfree and Afterparty, as movement in this space.

The streamer also highlighted upcoming content like Cobra Kai Season 4, Red Notice (starring Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds), and Army of Thieves as fueling an expected jump in fourth-quarter growth.