Netflix is making a huge push to become more than just the biggest SVOD in the world, but to break out as the hub of on-the-go entertainment. As a part of this push, it has YouTube directly in its crosshairs, looking to break into short-form video and podcasts. It’s a significant pivot, and one that its current tech isn’t exactly primed to handle.
Building on Its Exclusives Foundations
In entertainment, and in the battle between platforms, exclusive content is a huge selling point. Platforms rise and fall on the quantity and quality of content that can only be enjoyed from their libraries. It’s why those who want to find the best online slots will scroll to the Original Slots section first. On the iGaming platform, exclusives have been given a huge push, from the Cod Chaos series to one-off releases like Wheeler Reeler, Witch Doctor Goes Wilders, Cashzuma Lucky Locker, and Atomic Fishin’. To access these games, players need to come to this one platform, and as the content is what people come for, exclusives are convincing.
Netflix Originals, of course, have been a staple of the platform for years, with the streaming platform throwing billions of dollars to date at producing its own exclusive shows and films. There has been a noted issue with customers not tuning in for second seasons, but this indicator of a lack of story quality hasn’t slowed them down.
Improving the Tech to Facilitate More Content Types
Discovery has long been the focus of the search engine within the Netflix platform, helping people to find the first season of a show or best film from an actor before going to the extended library. With short-form videos and podcasts being integrated, this method of discovery doesn’t appear to mesh particularly well.
Short-form videos and podcasts, as is detailed in this deep dive into the push, are consumed differently from Netflix’s core entertainment mediums. Podcasts don’t run too well as TV shows, after all. So, Netflix is toying with a more suitable AI search that will attempt to contextualize searches better to help facilitate faster access.
Building out personalization features with a more adaptable underpinning AI model would also help to cover for other shortfalls. Podcasts and some short-form video series tend to release with a regular schedule. A weekly or bi-weekly show is pretty normal for podcasts, while short-form may launch each day.
Netflix lets you add things to My List, but suits the culture the platform created of starting a show and just flowing from the first episode to the end. There’s much more variety in the new content forms from one to the other; people will likely jump in at different points, and users want to get a bump of some kind when a new video drops.
If any company has the resources to overcome this problem, it’s Netflix. However, it’ll need to be achieved in a way that doesn’t upset the state of play for its core SVOD service while specifically improving the experience for podcast and short-form video consumers. AI looks to be the way forward, but it may take some time to get right.