Sixteen years into its streaming foray, Netflix has finally opened its books and unveiled a list of its most watched programs for the first half of 2023, with a promise to make this a biannual exercise. Netflix executives are not releasing this data out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they have finally acquiesced to years of calls for transparency. Starting its streaming venture as an ad-free space, the SVoD giant is now also an advertising business, and thus must make these numbers public to its new customers—the advertisers. As its users become Netflix’s product, flexing the strength of its offering to prospective advertisers has become crucial—particularly when the streamer celebrated the one-year anniversary of its ad tier…