Preserving the quality of the subscriber experience at Netflix is key as the service considers its advertising plan, said Amy Reinhard, Netflix’s president of advertising.
“For us the viewer or member experience is by far the most important thing,” she said during a keynote speech at DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group’s EnTech conference Feb. 25 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
“We want to make sure we are the first SVOD service that people are logging into,” she said. “We know we’re that last service that people want to cancel so making sure that members keep coming back onto the service to watch that great variety and quality of content is very, very important. At the same time, we think that is very important to advertisers because they want our members to have a really great experience.”
Consequently, Netflix pays head to how members experience ads, she said.
“When we think about things like ad load, we take a long-term view on ad load. We think it’s very, very important that the ad load is light,” she said. “We think about things like frequency capping. We think there’s nothing more frustrating than getting onto a platform and being shown the same ad, the same creative four or five times in a row. So we’re very, very picky about making sure that that member experience is fantastic. And at the end of the day that’s really relevant for advertisers.”
Reinhard also discussed the various franchise tie-ins employed by the service.
“I love our brand marketing,” which has fandom at its heart, she said. She pointed out the Dove soap tie-in with “Bridgerton.”
“It feels very authentic, leans into the brand attributes,” she said.
She also cited the Cheetos tie-in with “Wednesday,” which included the character Thing having Cheetos fingerprints.
The tie-ins are designed to feel “really authentic to the user,” she said.
Reinhard also discussed the company culture and leadership philosophy, saying it’s about “making sure as leaders that you’re not micromanaging.”
“I always think from a leadership perspective, it’s important to hire people who are smarter than us,” she said.
Moderator Andrea Downing, president of PBS Distribution and DEG board secretary, asked Reinhard about the qualities needed for leadership.
“The best leadership advice that I’ve ever gotten came from Ted [Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO],” Reinhard said.
Reinhard said he noted that early in your career you move up because you are an expert, but later, “as you move up it really becomes about being a leader of leaders,” she said. It’s about “communication and collaboration.”
She also stressed the need to be flexible.
“You need to be OK with change,” she said, noting the numerous reorganizations the company has experienced.
Downing also broached the subject of artificial intelligence.
“I am excited about AI,” Reinhard said. “We can be fearful, or we can lean into it. And I take the latter approach.”
She said AI promised productivity gains.
“It will enable us to do more things quicker,” she said, adding “the human creativity is really, really important and we want to make sure we keep that.”
She noted that AI might help with quick production turnarounds.
“This is an area where, given my production background, I’m very excited about dovetailing the opportunities there,” she said.
She cited the surprise success of KPop Demon Hunters.
“We never could have imagined that it was gonna be the kind of cultural phenomenon that it was,” she said.
AI could allow for quick turnaround of marketing, she said, noting that in the past a spot could take six to nine months to produce.
“I think with AI we are able to jump on those kind of opportunities much more quickly,” she said.
Reinhard said Netflix’s move into sports and live event programming was more about creating buzz then boosting advertising.
“Sports is not something that we went into because of advertising,” she said. “It really started with a programming approach.”
Events such as the Jan. 24 free solo climb by Alex Honnold of the 1,667-foot Taipai 101 skyscraper in Taiwan are about “being able to make sure it’s a must watch experience so people tune in at that time,” she said.
“We want to drive big audiences,” she said, noting that the first foray into this strategy was the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing battle.
In addition to the “must watch” experience, the programming team also thinks about the ability to drive the conversation.
The aim is “seeing the social conversation for days, sometimes even weeks after the event,” she said.
“We want to own Christmas Day,” she said of Netflix’s holiday NFL lineup, because families are together on that day.
The service is expanding beyond U.S. sports as well, she said.
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