For a while, Netflix wanted to keep its watch time up because the amount of time people spent on the platform was a reliable proxy for how likely they were to continue to pay for Netflix. Lately, as the company has pursued advertising, those watch time metrics are even more important, and the bad news is that they’ve been declining. In the first half of 2026, the average Netflix subscriber watched 1.64 hours daily, a figure that is down from 1.72 hours in the first half of 2024 and down from 1.81 hours in the first half of 2023. That decline couldn’t come at a worse time, as Netflix needs per-subscriber viewer hours to go up in order to squeeze more money out of its ad clients.
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