Netflix Users Avoid over Six Days Worth of Commercials per Year

Users of the video streaming site Netflix are avoiding over six days worth a year of commercials, according to the streaming blog Cordcutting.

The site worked out roughly how many hours viewers spent watching content on Netflix rather than cable TV.

As of January 2016 Netflix’s total viewing time was 125 million hours a day between its 75 million subscribers, which Cordcutting concluded equaled to the average subscriber watching 1.67 hours of ad-free content per day.

An hour of regular TV includes 15 minutes and 38 seconds, or 938 seconds, of commercials, according to Nielsen, which when multiplied by 1.67 repeating hours of viewing comes out at 158.5 hours saved per year.

Given that the Netflix subscriber base has grown since January to 81 million, it is estimated that the figure is closer to 147 hours a year, over six full days worth of ads.

However it must be considered that Nielsen’s estimates of 15.38 minutes per hour of adverts only account for the US, and that this figure may vary across Netflix’s global consumer base.

What’s more, Netflix takes away from platforms that previously did not have ads either, such as DVDs/Blu-rays and on-demand viewing.

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