But the decision to go public with even some of its data was something of an about-face for Netflix, which once claimed it never wanted to get involved in the weekly Hollywood competition based on ratings or box office receipts.

For a movie, according to the statistics that have appeared in the earnings reports, a view denotes that 70 percent of it was watched within four weeks of its premiere. For a television series, the company counts a view as a streaming of 70 percent of one episode within four weeks of the day it appeared on the service.

The Netflix numbers do not correspond to any traditional metric used by the entertainment industry.

For instance, Netflix reported in January that 40 million households had watched “You,” a drama from the prolific producer Greg Berlanti. By the Nielsen measure, a typical episode of “You” would have an audience of eight million viewers in the United States, according to the cable network FX, which has access to the Nielsen data.

“An average audience of eight million viewers is good, but it’s not an average audience of 40 million total viewers, which would make ‘You’ the No. 1 show on American television,” John Landgraf, the head of FX, said when he revealed the Nielsen number.

Netflix would not confirm that the data in its earnings reports had amounted to official most-watched lists for its movies and shows. “We select a few titles to highlight each quarter, but they are not meant to be a comprehensive list of top performers,” a Netflix spokesman said.

In a call with investors on Wednesday, Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, suggested that the company could start making information about its most popular shows more widely available, potentially going beyond the “Popular on Netflix” and “Now Trending” sections of the welcome screen for subscribers in the United States. The reason? Viewers like knowing what’s popular.

“If they want to use that as a tool to help guide their decision making, we want to help them do it,” he said on the earnings call.