Worth mentioning a situation I happen to be familiar with: sharing Netflix with other people can actually be more profitable for Netflix, ironically. It’s much harder to coordinate subbing for a month and then stopping when you’re sharing with your family members. It’s extremely unintuitive, but it could be the reason Netflix has accepted this and added profiles for different family members.
A meta thread for video streaming services - Netflix, Hulu, Disney, HBO, Warner, Prime, AppleTV, etc
I wouldn’t underestimate Netflix at this point. I see no future in the next several years in which I pause our subscription, even under substantial price hikes (don’t tell them I said that). There’s just too much good stuff that I enjoy, and my family too.
Everything else is fair game. I currently have no means of watching the new Game of Thrones, so I’m keeping an eye on my options for that. I might short-term subscribe to CraveTV, but would have a lot less loyalty to it after I’m done with it.
That’s not the right way to look at it. Netflix grades their shows on how they drive signups and retention (lifetime revenue), but signups are especially important. A show that’s how for two weeks can pay for itself. And this is globally since they got so good at translating English shows.
They also structure financing for new production so the incoming cash from the value of the show isn’t unsustainably slower than the outgoing cash for production/purchasing.
They also do a pretty good job marketing existing shows to new customers and shows people haven’t gotten around to seeing to existing customers.
It would be unsustainable if they weren’t huge and good at data, though.
I kind of disagree on this, to be honest, but that may just be because of the nature of my media consumption habits. I find the in-app marketing to be pretty terrible at surfacing stuff that I wouldn’t otherwise know about that I’m actually interested in. And it isn’t helped by the fact that they blur the boundaries between their “trending” “recently added” and “recommended (or whatever it is” categories so that they all show pretty much the same stuff, heavily biased to whatever genre I’ve watched most recently. Maybe that algorithm does work on average, but it’s really bad for me.
I know what you mean. I think the home screen has multiple goals for existing users:
- Get you watching something right now (agree they are not always showing the right thing at the top)
- Introduce you to something you’ll watch later (achieving x views of a show or movie’s card means it’s much more likely to be watched. Even if you don’t think you are interested right now. They are changing tastes in aggregate. It’s weird.)
- Push you into search, related titles and ratings if you can’t find what you want so you become more of a power user, which helps with retention.
Also, they see analysis paralysis as a big problem, so they’d rather have some overlap in those rows of categories to make them seem a little more familiar. I think that’s also why they put Currently Watching and your watch list at the top.
But the search is so bad! I have to use a Chrome extension to make it vaguely functional unless I’m searching for a specific title.
I have no problem at all with that. 9 times out of 10, the next thing I want to watch is something I’ve already watched (for TV, of course). It’s when I want to watch something new that the interface lets me down. It just serves up the same dozen or so items no matter what category I look under.
72% on non-original programming. Netflix’s “move to originals” strategy has some work to do.
I mainly subscribe for the kids shows these days. Kids can rewatch the same shows over and over again, and not care.
All these articles that tout Netflix’s numbers are highly suspect since they are known for not giving out any data. So no idea how these writers know this info on what users are watching.
Uh, huh? They give out their subscriber number with every quarterly report.
Here’s their report for the first quarter of 2019
In this case, Nielsen has been quietly doing their own measurement of Netflix numbers – and not yet going full in on making those a part of their ratings portfolio but it’s coming soon – and the 72% is from Nielsen’s measurement.
And, given that such measurement can be a vital chip to hold in content negotiations, if Nielsen was too far wrong in that 72% assessment, you can bet that Netflix would step in to dispute it.
I noticed yesterday that they finally made My List a primary option at the top of the screen (at least on Android), so no more “What random row did Netflix decide to put My List on today?”
They only need to move to originals as fast as the licensed shows leave. And some of the licensed shows will come back when their proprietors’ streaming services fail.
In the US, about 25% of the library is original (would welcome a better source than piecing this together from random articles, though), so if originals are 28% of viewing, they’re at least holding their own.
Losing The Office and Friends will be tough, though.
Maybe. But if 72% of consumed minutes on Netflix are people not watching originals, it also suggests that people aren’t getting the viewing they’re looking for from Netflix originals, and if those library titles are offered on another platform, they’re going to start seeing a net subscription drag, where the ratio of new subscribers to cancelling subscribers starts to look bad.
This, ultimately, may be the hidden danger of Netflix’s 3 seasons and you’re canceled cost strategy. Shows that only last 3 seasons and perhaps less than 40 episodes may not create the kind of “must see” long term fandom that holds subscribers in what is going to become a very competitive streaming marketplace soon.
And I can’t speak to everyone’s Netflix, because the front page you see on Netflix when you start the app is different for everyone based on previous watch preferences – but Netflix’s algorithm absolutely pushes original content to the fore. So while originals may only account for 10-15% of all programs on Netflix, it’s worth noting that on the typical front page of the app, originals seem to account for 60% or more of the content pushed to users.
And if that 72% number is even in the ballpark, it implies that a lot of viewers are making the effort to push that original content aside to get to the stuff they want.
Personally, they’re bubbling up the wrong originals for me. Forget what show it was but there was something I was actually interested in a couple months ago that got buried so hard I wasn’t even aware the next season was out. Might have been one of the Marvel shows?
I wasn’t talking sub numbers but viewing data.
Neilson numbers have no reason to be believed. They have no access to Netflix’s data, nobody does. They are trying to use their past position and frankly guesses to say they can measure viewers just like regular networks. Netflix doesn’t work like that. So that’s a bunch of FUD IMO.
Nobody has access to Netflix’s data, but surveys are a thing. Done properly, there’s no reason they couldn’t provide some insight.
What the hell is DC Universe?
Also Swamp Thing!