New Thing in Same as Old Thing Shock

As Netflix moves ever closer toward being an ‘advertising adjacent’ business, the quality and sophistication of the data they publish about the performance of their shows is improving. Last week they published their new Engagement Report. Twice yearly, they will publish this report to give people a ‘comprehensive’ view of what people are watching in the six months prior.

What this data shows us, quite clearly, is how similarly the Netflix platform behaves in comparison to good old fashioned linear broadcasting. The stuff which drives the bulk of the engagement - or viewing hours - is not necessarily the content which Netflix is , or would like to be, famous for.

When I worked at Channel 4, we realised that the daytime schedule - specifically, the slot between 3pm and 5pm Monday through Friday, accounted for 25% of the commercial impacts on the channel within a year, making this part of the schedule incredibly important for the channel in audience delivery terms. This was in spite of the fact that shows in this part of the schedule were notionally much less glamorous than other stuff C4 commissioned: Countdown, Deal or No Deal and the like.

These shows certainly didnt recieve 25% of Marketing support or investment, which was overwhelmingly pointed at the peak schedule. The 9pm and 10pm dramas and documentaries which would be evocative or illustrative of the channel’s brand positioning: innovative, inspiring, provocative.

Having worked for Channel 4 but also with some other Broadcaster brands, it’s quite typical to think about marketing priorities through the lens of a 2x2 grid. The horizontal axis being ‘ratings’ and the vertical, ‘reputation’. Does a marketing priority drive big audience numbers (ratings) or did it drive or substantiate the brand’s position in market (reputation)? Or both?

It might benefit Netflix’s share price for them to position themselves as different or ‘other’ in comparison to linear TV. But what the data shows is that the dynamics on the platform are exactly the same. Given the increasing maturity of ‘streaming’ behaviour and the scale and size of Netflix’s audience, it’d perhaps be un-wise to expect this pattern not to exist within the confines of their platform (or that of Prime video, Disney+ etc etc). Ginny and Georgia is much more important to Netfix in viewing terms than a show like The Witcher.

It’s been interesting to read alot of the reaction to the Netflix report. Many of the articles on the topic seem to demonstrate something bordering on disbelief: that the shows we (the media community) like to watch and talk about aren’t anywhere near the top of the engagement ranking and aren’t reflective of the things most people spend their time with. As Mark Ritson has said for a long time: we (the media industry, media journalists and even the ‘vocal minority’ talking about shows on reddit and Tiktok) are not the audience. Our behaviours are not good indicators of what the majority of netflix viewers and their consumption habits will look like.

Netflix is being forced into acknowledging this dynamic, by the unions representing production teams but also by media agencies. Who will not invest advertising dollars without clear, transparent and robust data about audience behaviour. For too long, Netflix has been able to lean more heavily on the ‘reputational’ story: carefully selecting the shows and stories it promotes, their equivalent of ‘peak’ programming.

Trade body Thinkbox (who represent UK TV broadcasters) has long said that TV isn’t dying, it’s just having babies. This data proves that to be true. It’s another example of ‘the blurry munge’ in technological advancement and further evidence still that much of the way tech and media journalism reports technological advancement is wrong and not relective of consumer behaviour. Netflix might not be constrained by a linear schedule, but if it looks like TV and gets watched through a TV, it’s probably TV.