How can Netflix benefit from NLP?

Netflix continues to dominate the film and television streaming industry, with over 250 million subscribers as of 2024. Globally, Netflix users spend an estimated 164.8 million hours a day streaming content, as described here. 

The growth of Netflix coincided with the decline of more traditional film rental services such as Blockbuster and has often been widely considered as one to watch in terms of investment for stock traders and investors, as debated here. 

To ensure Netflix stays ahead of the competition and to meet evolving viewer expectations, Netflix could further harness natural language processing (NLP).

What is NLP?

Natural language processing (NLP) is a machine learning technology that allows computers to interpret and understand human language. The technology already has widespread adoption in many industries, such as within search engines and for chatbot virtual assistants.

How does Netflix currently use AI?

The American streaming service leverages AI and machine learning across various parts of their platform: 

• The recommendation engine that suggests content to each user based on their viewing history
• Preferences 
• Viewing habits

This recommendation system uses content-based filtering as well as collaborative filtering to predict what the user might want to watch next, helping to improve user engagement and retention.

Netflix has also used AI to help with the marketing of their own productions, beginning with the ‘House of Cards’ US political drama. 

Ten different advertising showreels were created, and consumer preferences were analyzed to choose which showreel would be shown to each individual user. Some were shown a showreel that featured an actor or actress who the user had watched in a separate production, whereas others were shown adverts that focused upon certain plotlines similar to that viewer’s favorite genre. 

The result is personalized content suggestions that are relevant to the users viewing habits and preferences. According to McKinsey research, 75 percent of what people watch on Netflix is recommended to them through the personalization algorithm.

However, this approach is a reactive form of personalization, it relies upon the user viewing programmes that they like first, so the engine can learn from this and later tailor suggestions to them. This is where NLP could come in.

Using NLP to find new shows

Natural language processing is being utilized in many chatbots to provide tailored answers to specific questions. If Netflix incorporated an NLP-powered chatbot, users would be able to ask queries such as:

“Suggest me a new TV series similar to the US Office”

Or 

“I want to get into Anime, where should I start”

This form of content recommendation would be far more proactive, and would enable Netflix to make content recommendations based on what the user wants to watch now, rather than making suggestions based on past viewing habits. 

By doing so, users would have a greater degree of control over the suggestions being made to them, helping to further personalize their viewing experience.

The primary benefits of a content-suggesting chatbot would be:

• Enable users to find truly new films and shows, without the need for previous viewing habits
• Tailor suggestions to specific requirements such as a desired length of time

Is it feasible?

Yes, a chatbot that can suggest films and TV shows from textual instructions is certainly feasible. 

NetGeist offers custom solutions involving NLP and personalized chatbots. If you have an idea of how NLP could help your organization, get in touch.