Analysis of Netflix's Jul-Dec 2023 Engagement Report, June 1st 2024
by Robin @beatricebadass1
Warrior Nun Season 2: A Success Based on Netflix’s Jul-Dec 2024 Engagement Report Data: An Analysis
Ok campers, here we go…
An analysis of the latest Netflix engagement report shows that not only does Warrior Nun Season 2 continue to have solid viewership more than 1 year after its premiere compared to other Netflix shows…
…but Warrior Nun Season 2 is among the top 16% of nearly 1200 Netflix shows in terms of premiere views (the number of views of a show in the weeks following the season’s premiere, as reported by Netflix’s Global Top 10)…
…and Warrior Nun Season 2 was also hella cost-effective, costing less per premiere view than some of the biggest shows on Netflix including The Crown (Season 5 and 6), The Sandman Season 1, and One Piece Season 1.
Oh, and Warrior Nun Season 2 did all that without any promotion from Netflix.
Seems like a strong case for giving Warrior Nun a proper conclusion, no?
To the data!
When Netflix released its first engagement report about 6 months ago, it said “[s]uccess on Netflix comes in all shapes and sizes, and is not determined by hours viewed alone... It’s all about whether a movie or TV show thrilled its audience” and “the size of that audience relative to the economics of the title.”
Our analysis of that first engagement report and other data showed that not only did Warrior Nun Season 2 thrill its audience, but it was also a cost-effective season with a cost-per-premiere-view in line with some of the biggest hits of the year July 2022 – June 2023.
Now we have assessed Netflix’s second engagement report, covering the period July to December 2023. The new engagement report makes some improvements over the first installment, by now separating tv shows and movies and adding in show runtimes and views instead of just hours viewed.
This is important because views (hours viewed divided by season runtime) is a much more accurate picture of a show’s viewership (since some shows are much longer than others), and Netflix moved to measuring success by views instead of hours viewed about a year ago.
(Incidentally, in our analysis of the first engagement report, we noted all of this and did our own calculations of runtimes and views for the top 500 shows).
The new engagement report thus does a pretty good job of measuring performance, but it’s still not an accurate reflection of performance. Because the report captures a moment in time (the 6-month period of July to December 2023), it automatically favors shows that premiered during this 6-month period, since show seasons typically have their greatest performance in the first four weeks of a season.
Therefore, the best way to measure how a show season that premiered before July 2023 to shows that premiered between July and December 2023 is to compare premiere views of both shows, using the Netflix’s Global Top 10 as a proxy for peak performance of a show.
So, the new engagement report measures performance for 6,599 TV shows by views during the period July to December 2023, with Warrior Nun Season 2 ranking 1129 of 6599 (top 17.1%). We sorted this list to exclude titles not available globally and to exclude comedy specials under 2 hours, and then finally to exclude shows without premiere dates and shows that premiered before Netflix started publishing hours viewed data June 28, 2021 (and thus premiere views cannot be calculated).
That left us with 1,196 shows (1,181 of which could have had hours viewed in the Global Top 10).
Finally, we went through every Global Top 10 List (there are separate weekly lists for English and non-English) from June 28, 2021 – December 31, 2023, to capture the premiere hours viewed for those 1,181 shows and used that to calculate premiere views.
The results of all this show that Warrior Nun Season 2, which even with $0 promotion from Netflix managed to reach 65.9 million hours viewed during the first 3 weeks after its premiere, resulting in 11.2 million premiere views, ranks #188 out of 1,181 shows in premiere views.
This puts Warrior Nun Season 2 in the top 16% of all the shows we analyzed.
Combined with all the demand and other data we have provided since Warrior Nun Season Two’s premiere, it’s clear that Warrior Nun Season 2 “thrilled its audience” and continues to do so.
Indeed, we most recently posted about the strong demand for Warrior Nun Season 2 more than a year after its premiere.
Now we turn to economics relative to audience size.
Based on publicly available budget data & estimates for some of the biggest shows on @netflix, we can measure how Warrior Nun Season Two’s cost-per-premiere-view stacks up.
Measured against 12 of the biggest shows on Netflix, Warrior Nun Season 2is right in the middle. Of the 6 shows with a higher cost-per-premiere-view than Warrior Nun Season 2, it should be noted that three—The Crown, The Sandman, and One Piece—were renewed for an additional season. The other two shows, Manifest and Ozark, were planned endings.
Additionally, Warrior Nun Season Two’s $2.21 cost-per- premiere-view is just 2.8% more expensive per premiere view than Vikings: Valhalla’s, which is $2.15 per premiere view (and coming back for a third season).
One Piece, which with its pre-existing manga fanbase and huge promotional budget, had 465% of the premiere views of Warrior Nun Season 2 but it was also less cost effective, coming in at $2.27 per premiere view.
The Crown S5, with 33,214,689 premiere views, was SIGNIFICANTLY less cost effective than Warrior Nun Season 2 at $3.91 per premiere view, a full 77% more expensive per premiere view than Warrior Nun Season 2.
And once again, it has to be noted that #WarriorNun S2’s strong performance came despite no promotion from Netflix.
We have previously detailed the lack of promotion for Warrior Nun Season 2 compared to Netflix promotional efforts for its other shows, which had a significant negative impact on the audience size for Warrior Nun Season 2. Our estimates show that 21.8 million Netflix accounts at peak (first 28 days) watched Warrior Nun Season 1, which was appropriately promoted.
Our estimates show that with proper promotion, 25.6 million Netflix accounts at peak would have watched Warrior Nun Season 2.
With 25.6 million views, Warrior Nun Season 2 would rank #75 by premiere views (top 6.3%).
This would also bring down Warrior Nun Season Two’s cost-per-premiere-view from $2.21 to $0.97, making it number 2 on our list of 13, only behind Bridgerton in cost effectiveness.
Once again, the latest data show that Warrior Nun Season 2 was clearly successful in spite of not being promoted, and that with appropriate promotion, a proper conclusion to the show would be a huge success.