philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

For House of Cards and Arrested Development, Netflix favors big data over big ratings

If you’ve been on Netflix lately, you may have seen a trailer for House of Cards, the company’s first big original content play. But chances are, the version of the trailer you got to see is different from the one that the site presented to me. That’s because Netflix is using ten different cuts, geared towards different audiences – and presents them to viewers based on their past viewing behaviour.

That kind of targeting is part of Netflix’s approach to use “a balance of intuition and analytics” for its original content, explained Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos during an interview on the sidelines of the at All Things Digital’s Dive into Media conference in Dana Point, California Tuesday. Netflix is using “really big data,” as Sarandos put it, to evaluate everything from promotion of its original content to the question of which shows it is going to pick up next.

And we are talking not just simply audience size levels, but very fine-grained data, down to the engagement level with each individual piece of content, as well as the mix of content each subscriber is watching.

...a ratings-free approach is so appealing to creators, and potentially so disruptive to the industry as a whole. “

See the full story here: http://gigaom.com/2013/02/12/netflix-ratings-big-data-original-content/?utm_source=General+Users&utm_campaign=0929839032-c%3Amed+d%3A02-13&utm_medium=email