So, what is Netflix and how does it know what genres appeal to people and why? There are hundreds of thousands of hours of Netflix series & movie content. Netflix has very specific algorithms to measure what people are watching and why. It allows them to manage their content and point people in the direction of genres they think they may be interested in. This translates to Netflix retaining your patronage because they are virtually doing all your choices for you. To understand how people look for content, they came up with over 76,000 micro-genres. They assess the genre descriptions, isolate their keywords and went on to build their own self-engineered genre generate.
The Hollywood Framework
Netflix has unknowingly built the entire framework for the Hollywood producers, directors and investors to base their production decisions on. No longer is making a Netflix series or movie a massive gamble. It is now a calculated set of numbers and algorithms according to the Netflix reverse engineering model.
What’s so brilliant about this you ask? All the guesswork has been taken out of Hollywood’s screen entertainment marketing questions. Is this what people will come and watch? What if we do a sequel to that movie? Will people watch another romantic comedy? What demographic will a certain film appeal to.
The Netflix Data Factory
The interesting thing is Netflix didn’t even realise the enormity of the descriptive data it had. To their knowledge, no one had ever compiled this much data on the Hollywood screen entertainment industry. Essentially, they were sitting on an avalanche of data that could now shape the making of television and movies in quantifiable measures.
Netflix worked out it has over 76,000 ways to describe a type of movie. Their grammar and vocabulary work in a certain way. It then breaks down into popular actors and directors.
Now what Netflix and the screen entertainment business have is a reverse engineered situation. Translated in layman terms, producers will not be producing shows and hope you like them. Based on the algorithms generated by Netflix, people are showing the producers genres they are turning to. Those same producers are now producing screen entertainment based on the numbers and demographics of what people are watching in popular numbers.
The data won’t stipulate how to make a show but it will unquestionably tell a producer what kind of entertainment they should be making. It’s sort of like the tail wagging the dog.
Real-time Netflix
Anything that is topical at a certain time, Netflix will work into its planning.Netflix recognises seasonal viewing, so come December, there will be the introduction of Christmas shows. Over the rest of the year, it looks at Halloween, holiday seasons, Easter, Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day. These would all be times where Netflix would reflect the topic in their viewing content.
What’s happening now on Netflix? Halloween is coming up, so Netflix had all your horror pleasure in mind when they put together the viewing for this month. Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead, Pyscho, Paranormal Activity.