Why Netflix wants you to watch web-series over movies? 🍿🎬

The OTT game has it's own unique challenges.

Welcome to the 119th edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more

---

Quick context 🗓
Remember your last login to the Netflix account? You were shown atleast 20 thumbnail options on what to watch - a strong majority of them being web series.

Isn’t the point of Netflix was to watch movies when it started? What’s all this push to web series than movies then? things seem to be out place, or not?

This is no accident or algorithm glitch🤞🏻
Short answer → Netflix wants it’s users to spend more time on the platform.
Higher the time spent by a user → Better retention of their monthly subscription → Predictable recurring revenues → More cash to improve the platform.

OTT game is tricky. When Netflix or anyone buys rights for a movie, the OTT buys the license for a 5/10/15/20 year period. On the other hand, Netflix original series are Netflix’s intellectual property and has not expiration/renewal period. This makes it a one time investment for Netflix and the likes of it.

Plus, OTT is a brutally competitive game ⬇️

First. pay exorbitant money for movie rights 💰
It’s a rumour that Netflix paid over Rs. 250 Cr to get rights of RRR (the golden globe winner) for a specific time period.

Second. solve the number of hours of content ⏱
If you have been attention, OTT is a game of time share. That means Netflix need to carry all those titles across different languages to attract different sets of global & local audiences.

Third. hit minimum watch hours per user every month 📺
Would you renew your OTT subscription if you aren’t watching atleast few hours every week? Would you rather pause it, right? This is a big problem if watch times aren’t healthy.

Fourth. compete with everything in the offline world 🏬
Remember 2021? Everyone was stuck at their homes and wanted to kill time. Not true anymore. The attention and top of the mind awareness has completely slipped for OTTs.

The solution ✨
Solve for quality & minimum quantity of watch times per user. And, that’s exactly the web series solve for (with 1 hour episodes and atleast 3 to 5 episodes per season) vs movies (2 hour long).

The core insight 🎯
Find out the different between usage patterns of retaining customers vs those who didn’t. Next, optimise your product offering (series vs movies), user journeys (Netflix homepage recommendation) & marketing pitch (thumbnail trailers that appear on hover for Netflix series). That’s all for now.

---

Missed last few stories? Read them now.

• Jan 20th : Why are people buying a $2500 mattress? 🤯

• Jan 17th: Why Jio plans to stream IPL for free? 🏏

• Jan 9th : Why does Domino's send extra "Oregano packets"? 🍕

• Over 100+ stories here.

Last week I sat down with my friend & founder of 10K designers, Abhinav Chhikara to talk about “How does growth design differ from product design?”. It’s an hour long conversation where went deeper into insights around growth <> design.