Netflix Inc. earlier this year saw a worrying signal in its data: Users were coming to the streaming service less often, reports The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter.
The company, which tracks how many days over a four-week period its members watch content on the service, was concerned that the decline in visits would ake it more likely that customers would cancel their subscriptions, the people said.
Following that finding, co-Chief Executive Reed Hastings called on staff to find ways to make subscribers visit the platform more frequently, particularly as viewers re-establish their commuting, travel and entertainment habits after the worst of the pandemic, they said.
Over the past two years, that overarching effort included measuring whether a specific program is deemed “sticky”—if it was watched for at least 75 minutes over the course of 28 days—and giving users more tools to identify content they really like, such as a double thumbs-up, people familiar with the effort said. Now, the company is looking more closely at stickiness in concert with how frequently members return to the service.
Adding more urgency to Netflix’s efforts to have customers spend more time on its platform is the November launch of its first ad-supported tier, given that the revenue the company can expect to generate from ads will depend on how many people see them.
Netflix experienced a large influx of new customers in the early days of the pandemic, when lockdowns left many people with more time to watch shows such as “Tiger King.” That trend waned as life started getting back to normal, Netflix raised its prices in the U.S. earlier this year and upstart streaming rivals including Walt Disney Co.’s Disney+ and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s HBO Max expanded their subscriber bases.
Netflix declined to comment.
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