by xp84 9 hours ago

I think Netflix's incentives, especially now that they have an ad tier, have changed.

With a subscription service 10 years ago, you just need to have enough must-see content:

- Original scripted TV series that become mainstream known and/or seen as prestige TV, like "The Crown," "Mindhunter," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things" etc.

- "Crown Jewel" reruns with huge fanbases such as The Office, Friends, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Arrested Development, etc.

- Unscripted TV series that become buzzy - like Love Is Blind, Tiger King, etc.

Having those categories all well-stocked ensures that only a fool would cancel their Netflix subscription as they'll be out of the loop when the new season of a 'zeitgeisty' show drops. You don't really need all your viewers to watch more hours to get more money every year, you can grow revenue with a combo of new viewers and price increases as long as users just watch regularly.

I think present-day Netflix sees incentives:

- to get as many people on the ad tier as possible so they can scale revenue with watch time

- to increase watch time which is a solved problem via psychological manipulation if you have good ML like they do

- more watch time without spending more money points pretty obviously to lowering cost per show as much as you can, which manifests as worse quality, more reality, more imported dubbed shows, etc. and drastically curtailing giving huge checks to the Matthew Weiners, David Benioffs, and Vince Gilligans of the world to bet on a massive superhit.

So they will want to focus heavily on the unscripted category plus whatever they can slap together cheaply, then autoplay and optimize their way to growth.

fnordpiglet 8 hours ago | [-2 more]

I’d note they’re not mutually exclusive revenue streams and both add meaningfully to their value. I think the reality is they peaked the first one and growth is in the second one. Subscriptions that are sticky however are much more valuable individually than an advertising tier user. But if you can cater to both and not downgrade subscriptions to ads tier you win in two parallel markets via the same platform. This is not a bad business strategy. But they need to not lose the subscriptions and their reason for being in the quest for growth or they’ll see nominal growth with decline in value.

xp84 8 hours ago | [-1 more]

> they need to not lose the subscriptions

note: I hate ads so I'm not trying to manifest this, but can you explain why you're so sure of this?

To me, it seems like they "should" (for greed reasons, I mean, not for my happiness) hike the prices of subscriptions aggressively while keeping the ad-tier attractively-priced, moving as many people as possible over. This increases ad revenue and allows more YoY growth if their ML can manipulate you into more watch hours in 2027 than you do in 2026.

Sure, some people like me will probably drop Netflix before they'll pay $35 a month or endure ads. But the current delta is only $10. I suspect they can make $10 a head in ad revenue in a year -- and if they can make $15, they would break even if they lost 3 ad-free subscribers but gained 2 back onto the ad tier. Anything better than those numbers would be a net gain.

MangoToupe 6 hours ago | [-0 more]

> while keeping the ad-tier attractively-priced

Wait, the ad tier isn't free? Good god....

SamDc73 6 hours ago | [-0 more]

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