"Orange Is the New Black" and "House of Cards" receive a lot of buzz when they premiere a new season, but Netflix has never revealed how many people actually watch these shows.
Nielsen Media will provide that answer for the first time when the ratings company starts to measure viewership of TV subscription online video services in December, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Nielsen will target services like Netflix and Amazon with technology that identifies streaming shows by analyzing their "audio components." The technology does not yet extend to subscription-video viewing on mobile devices.
The TV networks and studios that own the content acquired by the services will receive the collected data. The information could change how these media companies negotiate with sites like Netflix and Amazon over licensing content in the future. Some fear subscription online video services could hurt viewership on traditional, ad supported television, according to the Journal.
"Our clients will be able to look at their programs and understand: Is putting content on Netflix impacting the viewership on linear and traditional VOD [video on demand]?" Brian Fuhrer, a senior vice president at Nielsen, told the Journal.
Beyond the acquired content, the transparency will also affect the business the streaming services conduct with their original programming creators and talent. Netflix and Amazon both have more than 10 original series in production.
