Netflix Saves You This Many Days of Watching Commercials Per Year

Did you know that the average Netflix user spent about two hours a day watching content on the service in 2019? This was revealed by Netflix VP for Original Content Cindy Holland herself. 

Of course, this was before most of the world shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, so that number is most likely higher these days.

Still, if you spent at least two hours on Netflix last year, that means a ton of time saved from NOT watching commercials, since the on-demand streaming service doesn’t have them.

How much time exactly?

Reviews.com crunched the numbers based on the average American’s viewing habits. That might be slightly different than Filipinos’ television viewing habits, but it still gives us a pretty good idea of how our consumption of visual entertainment is changing.

With the average viewer spending four hours a day watching TV, and the average hour of network or cable TV roughly split between 42 minutes of programming and 18 minutes of ads, that means people are watching about one hour of commercials each day.

Comparing all this with the Netflix numbers, that means viewers save 219 hours or about 9.1 days of commercials per year, according to Reviews.com.

Because of the lockdowns caused by COVID-19, more people are watching streaming services, and perhaps for much longer. Reviews.com estimates that average total daily usage of Netflix has gone up by at least 30 minutes per user. That means an extra nine minutes saved from watching ads per day.

In addition to watching shows whenever they want and the vast library of content both original and syndicated from other studios and production companies, the fact that users get to watch shows ad-free is perhaps one of the main draws of streaming services like Netflix. It’s quite fascinating then to know that those few minutes of commercial-free viewing can actually add up to nine whole days.