Has Stranger Things turned the streaming world Upside Down?
by Anna Kasprzyk and Anna Krokiewicz.
What’s the recipe for a hit series? According to Netflix, it’s a combination of likable characters, supernatural powers, Dungeons & Dragons, and a pinch of humor and horror — all set in the 1980s.
This May, Netflix finally released the long-awaited new season of Stranger Things. Almost two months later, it’s still the number one series in the United States, where viewers have already spent over 846.2 million hours watching just this season alone as of this writing.
As superfans of the show ourselves, we decided to dive into our data to see how all four seasons have been performing on Netflix. For this US-focused analysis, we look at five Showlabs metrics: Views (V), Unique Viewers (UV), Binge Watching (BW), Completion Rate (CR), and Total Hours Spent (THS).
Season 4 returned after more than a 3-year break, with cast members Winona Ryder, David Harbor, Millie Bobby Brown, and Finn Wolfhard. While the protagonists try to move on with their lives after the traumatic events from the previous summer, evil doesn’t sleep. A wave of mysterious disappearances shakes the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana once again. And this time, it seems that not only is Hawkins in danger, but also the whole world.
Volume 1 of Stranger Things 4 was released on Netflix on May 27, 2022, followed by the release of the final two episodes five weeks later, on July 1. The strategy to leave the first part on a cliffhanger worked to generate additional audience excitement — while fans unhappy about having to wait vented their disappointment on social media, flooding the internet with memes.
VIEWS (V)
First, we wanted to check if the last season performed at least as well as the previous ones:
Stranger Things, 7- and 28-Day Total Views
(USA)
It’s no surprise that Season 4 generated the highest number of Views, both in the first 7- and 28-days after its release date, compared to the previous three seasons. While Netflix initially did not reveal subscriber viewership numbers for Season 1, Stranger Things has now become a flagship series for the streamer, with a devoted and growing fanbase.
The immediate popularity of the first season was such that it even increased consumer demand for Eggo waffles, as they’re the favorite food of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), one of the main characters. In turn, the manufacturer of Eggo waffles, the Kellogg Company, released a vintage 1980s Eggo television advertisement for Netflix to use in its Super Bowl LI commercial.
UNIQUE VIEWERS (UV)
Back to the analysis: Because the above table reports the total number of Views — which could be pumped up by overly-dedicated fans rewatching seasons ad infinitum — we took a look at just the Unique Viewers (UV):
Stranger Things, 7- and 28-Day Unique Viewers (UV)
(USA)
Overall, each new season saw marked audience growth, with more and more viewers watching the series from its first day of availability on the platform. When we compare the UVs of Season 1 to Season 4, we see significant jumps in audience size. There’s more than a 40-million difference between S1 and S4 during the first 7 days, and more than a 50-million difference between the two seasons during the first 28.
Also, while we’re here, let’s zoom in on Netflix’s Season 4 release strategy, whereby Netflix dropped Vol. 1 on May 27 and then the final two episodes five weeks later, on July 1. Below, we can see the jump in audience size on July 1. On this day, the number of UVs increased from 71 to 75 million in just a single day.
What do numbers like these mean for Netflix?
A month after the third season was released, the company revealed that this latest season had been watched by 64 million households, setting a new record at the time for the most-watched Netflix Original series. According to our data, that translates to roughly 45.7 million Unique Viewers in the United States alone.
As an aside: Part of this increase may have had to do with Coca-Cola jumping on the Stranger Things bandwagon and releasing a limited run of New Coke (first introduced in 1985) to coincide with the third season of the show.
BINGE WATCHING (BW)
From the data above, we can see that starting from the second season on, the majority of UVs who watched Stranger Things did so within the first 7 days of its release. So we had to ask ourselves: How bingeable is this show? Let’s take a closer look:
Stranger Things, Binge Watching (BW)
(USA)
In order to analyze the BWn+ metric, we define “an individual viewing session” as one where the viewer watched episode-after-episode (after episode, etc) with no more than a 120-minute break in between, and without switching to watch any other content.
It’s important to note here that the first season of Stranger Things consisted of eight episodes (avg length: 51 mins); the second season had nine episodes (avg length: 52 mins); the third season once again had eight episodes (avg length: 54 mins); and the fourth season had nine episodes, with the first eight averaging 60 mins in length and the final episode clocking in at 120 mins, pushing the season’s average length up to 67 mins.
Above, we can see that Seasons 2 and 3 had slightly higher BWn+ rates, with 72.12% and 74.98% of individual viewing sessions, respectively, lasting two or more episodes during the first 7 days after the series’s release. Seasons 1 and 4 had 67.6% and 66.87% for the same time periods, respectively.
Compared to the previous three seasons, Season 4 appears to be less bingeable once we get into the three-plus-episode territory. Among the most devoted fans (those who presumably watched the series during the first 7 days), only 22.82% of sessions were three or more episodes, compared to 34.37% for Season 3.
And, only 1.85% of viewers watched five or more episodes back-to-back during the first 7 days, compared to 4.07% for Season 3. Personally, the fourth season was an emotional rollercoaster, so it’s not surprising if viewers wanted to take a longer break between episodes to reset.
COMPLETION RATE (CR)
To look beyond the superfans who binged the show, we asked ourselves: How many people completed each season? To measure this, we used our Completion Rate (CR) metric:
Stranger Things, Completion Rate (CR), percentage
(USA)
Season 4 had the highest Completion Rate (CR), with 71.66% of UVs watching at least 70% of the series in the first seven days, compared to 57.27 % for Season 3.
Interestingly, Season 1 only had a 36.92% completion rate during the first 7 days, which then picked up to 43.45% during the first 28 days. Since then, the CR has only grown, and in February 2022, Netflix renewed Stranger Things for a fifth and final season.
TOTAL HOURS SPENT (THS)
US audiences spent 294.8 million hours watching the fourth season of Stranger Things during its first 7 days from release, which was almost twice the 150.4 million hours audiences spent watching Season 3 during its first 7 days.
In the first 28 days, the THS on Season 4 was 501.8 million — which came from the release of only the first 7 of the 9 total episodes. Just five days after Vol 2. dropped, audiences went on to watch 300 million more hours.
What’s more, Vol. 1 of Season 4 featured the song ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush from her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love (1985). As Kate later wrote, her song was “given a new lease on life by the young fans who love the show — I love it too!” The song went on to chart around the world, reaching №8 in the UK. The “Stranger Things effect” even managed to turn the music world Upside Down.
So if you haven’t seen Stranger Things yet, it’s time to pop some Eggo waffles into your toaster and fire up your Netflix. You have a lot of catching up to do.
The audience measurement data in this article is from Showlabs.tv, developed by PlumResearch.
Interested to learn more? Click here or email us at: hello@plumresearch.com
