Netflix is the single greatest company operating in the world today. Netflix is so essential to our lives that it should be reclassified as a utility. If I could make babies with Netflix, I would. And these are all sentiments I held before reading about how many hours a year Netflix is preventing us from watching on TV, and now I love Netflix even more.
A recent study by Nielsen took a look at the absolutely amount of time commercials are taking up per hour of television, and how high those numbers have risen in recent years. In the past six years the average time of commercials shown per hour has risen from 13min25sec to 15min38sec, which is a f*cking ridiculous increase in commercial-time-per-hour in just six years. So assuming you’re watching one hour of television per day you’re forced to watch 15 minutes and 38 seconds during that hour.
But what does any of this have to do with Netflix? Well, Netflix is commercial free. Also, the average Netflix subscriber spends 1.5hrs per day watching Netflix content. Extrapolate that out to an entire year and Netflix is saving the average consumer from watching over 130 hours of commercials, which is more than three average (40 hour) work weeks. Netflix is your friend. Netflix is looking out for your well being, saving your from 130 hours of commercials per year. All hail Netflix.
We calculated this total number by multiplying the amount of time the average person streams Netflix on a daily basis by the average time ads are aired during a normal one hour broadcast. With Netflix subscribers spending an average of 1.5 hours a day streaming from the service, and an average hour of television having approximately 15 minutes and 30 seconds of ads, Netflix is saving its subscribers from over 130 hours of advertisements a year.
According to a 2000 person survey conducted by TDG Research, users are now spending upwards of 1.5 hours a day on average streaming Netflix content. This ends up being around 540 hours of time spent streaming Netflix a year.
While there was a scare a few months ago that Netflix was going to start testing advertisements, CEO Reed Hastings came down on that rumor quick with a definitive “no way, no how” (you could of course argue the definition of advertisement with him, as they are testing in-house content ads for their own shows similar to HBO).
Now, do you really need another reason to ditch cable and switch to streaming? Are you really comfortable knowing you’re watching 130 hours of ads each year on cable?