Insights and Trends Archives

Content Discoverability Isn’t a Recommendation Problem. It’s a Metadata Problem.

By David Markowitz | August 28, 2026

A search results interface showing a query for "crime dramas" returning three titles, The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, and Breaking Bad, each marked "Found" with their real genre and tag metadata displayed. A fourth title sits in a dashed panel marked "Missing," live on three platforms but excluded from results because it has no genre or tags on file.

A streaming platform can rebuild its entire browse and recommendation experience and still leave viewers unable to find what they’re looking for. That’s because discoverability isn’t primarily a design problem. Content discoverability is the degree to which a title that’s licensed and live on a platform actually surfaces in search, browse, or recommendations for the…

Which Streamers Own the Top 10? Netflix Leads on Volume, HBO Max on Staying Power

By David Markowitz | August 25, 2026

Graphic titled Two ways to win the Top 10, many titles briefly or a few for months, split into two labeled zones. The Netflix zone, labeled the volume game with 66 spots from 37 titles at about 1.8 weeks each, shows a grid of 15 title posters including The Boroughs, Remarkably Bright Creatures, The Crash, His & Hers, Beef, Bridgerton, and The Night Agent, with a chip reading plus 22 more titles. The HBO Max zone, labeled the staying power game with 48 spots from 15 titles at 3.2 weeks each, shows five larger posters with week badges: The Pitt at 15 weeks, Euphoria at 7, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms at 6, One Battle After Another at 5, and If I Had Legs I'd Kick You at 2. Source: Reelgood Weekly Streaming Top 10, US.

Netflix needed 37 different titles to hold its 66 weekly Top 10 spots in the first half of 2026, more than any other service. HBO Max reached 48 spots with just 15. Every streaming service claims momentum. The weekly Top 10 is where those claims meet an audience. We took the 260 overall Top 10…

When Project Hail Mary Hit #1, The Martian Wasn’t Streaming: Content Intelligence Takeaways for Streaming Marketers

By David Markowitz | August 19, 2026

When Project Hail Mary hit theaters and climbed to the top of the box office, the obvious follow-up watch was The Martian. Same author, Andy Weir. Same kind of stranded-astronaut, science-under-pressure story. But Houston had a problem; it wasn’t streaming anywhere. That gap, and how often it repeats across the industry, was the center of…

Introducing the Streaming Service Popularity Index: Who’s Actually Carrying Streaming’s Demand

By David Markowitz | August 11, 2026

Full ranking table from Reelgood's Streaming Service Popularity Index for June 24 to July 24, 2026, listing 19 US streaming services by rank, average titles in the US Top 100, Streaming Ranking Index score (0-10), and month-over-month change. Netflix ranks first at 9.78, followed by Prime Video at 8.82 and HBO Max at 7.23.

Netflix holds an average of 34.2 titles in the US Top 100 movies and shows at any given time. Philo holds 23.6, a smaller number built almost entirely from cable networks it carries rather than content it produces, and it just posted the biggest month-over-month jump on the board. That gap and that rise are…

How Alike Are UK Streaming Platforms? Genre vs. Tag Similarity Compared

By Daria Granja | August 10, 2026

Scatter chart titled "Every UK Streaming Platform Has a Different Content Personality" plotting genre variety on the vertical axis against narrative tag variety on the horizontal axis for select streaming platforms in the UK. The vertical axis runs from Genre Specialist at the bottom to Genre Generalist at the top. The horizontal axis runs from Theme Specialist on the left to Theme Generalist on the right. Four quadrants are labelled Diverse Curators, Everything Everywhere, Focused Storytellers, and Genre Encyclopedias. In the Diverse Curators quadrant: Channel 5 and BBC iPlayer. In the Everything Everywhere quadrant: ITVX, Prime Video, and NOW. Near the centre on the theme specialist side: Disney+ and Netflix. In the Genre Encyclopedias quadrant: Paramount+ and HBO Max. In the Focused Storytellers quadrant: Channel 4 and U. Footnote reads that the chart is based on distribution of top-3 genres and top-4 tags per title, including movies and TV series, from the Reelgood content streaming dataset as of July 2026.

A crime drama about a small-town investigation and a crime drama about corporate corruption share a genre and almost nothing else. Tags are where that difference lives, and it’s why genre-only comparisons miss so much of what’s actually distinctive about a catalogue. Reelgood tracks real-time and historical streaming availability and metadata across most platforms in…

What a Genre Dashboard Can’t See: The Case for Tag-Level Demand Data

By David Markowitz | August 4, 2026

Diverging bar chart titled Drama moved one spot, the stories inside it moved dozens, split into two labeled sections. The genre view section shows a single small bar for Drama at plus 1, from 167 to 168 weekly Top 10 spots. The tag view section, labeled inside those same Drama titles, shows relationships at plus 23 (33 to 56), doctor at plus 12 (4 to 16), and superhero at plus 12 (0 to 12) in green, and government-and-politics at minus 16 (22 to 6), social-inequality at minus 18 (18 to 0), and identity-and-growth at minus 20 (29 to 9) in red. Source: Reelgood Weekly Streaming Top 10, US.

Genre data says streaming barely changed this year: Drama held 167 of 260 weekly Top 10 spots in H1 2025 and 168 in H1 2026. But look closer – tag (sub-genre) data shows 82% of the stories behind that number turned over. Between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026, US…

All 10 Spider-Man Films Are Streaming Right Now. In the US, That’s a First.

By David Markowitz | July 31, 2026

Graphic titled "Where the Spider-Man Universe Has Streamed" showing posters for ten Spider-Man films in release order, each labeled with the number of US and UK streaming services that have carried it. Spider-Man (2002), US 14 and UK 8. Spider-Man 2 (2004), US 11 and UK 8. Spider-Man 3 (2007), US 15 and UK 6. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), US 8 and UK 8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), US 7 and UK 6. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), US 9 and UK 5. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), US 2 and UK 5. Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019), US 2 and UK 5. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), US 2 and UK 4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), US 3 and UK 3. Source: Reelgood streaming availability data, July 2026.

Key Takeaways All 10 films in the Spider-Man universe are streaming on subscription (SVOD) or free services (AVOD) right now, in both the US and the UK. The US reached a complete Spider-Man catalog for the first time on December 1, 2025, and has held it for 242 consecutive days. The UK has assembled a…

The TV Thriller Correction: Thriller Shows Lost Half Their Top 10 Presence in a Year

By David Markowitz | July 27, 2026

Bar chart titled The thriller correction happened on TV, not in movies, comparing thriller genre appearances in H1 2025 versus H1 2026. Thriller shows on the weekly shows Top 10 fall from 122 appearances to 56, labeled minus 54 percent. Thriller movies on the weekly movies Top 10 hold at 131 versus 132, labeled flat. Source: Reelgood Weekly Streaming Top 10, US.

Thriller appearances on Reelgood’s weekly TV shows Top 10 fell from 122 in H1 2025 to 56 in H1 2026, a 54% decline. Movie thrillers didn’t move. Television thrillers just went through a correction, and the chart’s biggest genre never flinched: Drama held 167 of 260 overall Top 10 spots in H1 2025 and 168…

Doctors, Small Towns, and Relationships: What’s Winning Streaming’s Top 10 in 2026

By David Markowitz | July 20, 2026

Bar chart comparing gaining Top 10 tag appearances in H1 2025 versus H1 2026. Relationships rises from 41 spots to 61, workplace from 24 to 37, secluded-locations from 21 to 33, small-town from 4 to 20, friendship from 9 to 18, and doctor from 4 to 16. Source: Reelgood Weekly Streaming Top 10, US.

The relationships tag rose from 41 to 61 of the 260 spots in Reelgood’s weekly overall Top 10 year over year, spread across 26 different titles. The stories replacing streaming’s fading political thrillers have personal stakes: relationships, workplaces, friendships, and small towns. That’s the second finding from comparing H1 2026 against H1 2025 in Reelgood’s…

Politics Fell Out of Streaming’s Top 10: The Biggest Thematic Decline of 2026

By David Markowitz | July 16, 2026

Bar chart comparing declining Top 10 tag appearances in H1 2025 versus H1 2026. Government-and-politics falls from 41 spots to 18, detectives-and-investigation from 44 to 27, identity-and-growth from 33 to 10, wealth-and-privilege from 26 to 15, social-inequality from 18 to 0, and technology from 14 to 4. Source: Reelgood Weekly Streaming Top 10, US.

Titles tagged government-and-politics held 41 of the 260 spots in Reelgood’s weekly overall Top 10 in the first half of 2025. In the first half of 2026, they held 18. Streaming’s political moment is over. That’s the clearest finding from comparing the first half of 2026 against the first half of 2025 in Reelgood’s weekly…