Netflix co-CEO Sarandos wants viewers to be afraid to miss new shows
Netflix co-CEO Sarandos wants viewers to be afraid to miss new shows
The executive pointed to the streamer’s successful brand-enhancing strategies as a way to continue capturing audience share.
As is the case with all streaming services, Netflix wants you to watch its shows and movies more often. But as the world’s largest streamer, it’s at least fair to wonder how much more viewership Netflix can attract. The company’s CEO Ted Sarandos spoke about that topic on Tuesday at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, discussing how the streamer creates such successful brands and how to get more people watching on a regular basis.
Key Details:
- Sarandos pointed to Nielsen ratings to show that Netflix still has lots of room to grow its viewership.
- The CEO wants to create a “FOMO” effect surrounding Netflix titles.
- He pointed to “Stranger Things” as an example of how the streamer has built successful brands around its content.
Quarter after quarter, Netflix has demonstrated its ability to carry the largest number of subscribers of any streaming service in the world. Netflix now has more than 282 million subscribers, and the next frontier for the company is getting subscribers to watch more regularly.
Sarandos pointed to Nielsen ratings which continually show Netflix garnering around 7% to 8% of the total TV audience. YouTube became the first streamer in history to capture 10% of the audience share in August, and Sarandos doesn’t see any reason that Netflix can’t hit that number too.
“It’s hard to believe that we’re under 10% of total television time even in our most mature markets,” he said. “Our percentage of total viewing has got a ton of runway to grow. And with that, I think our fandom and our membership and our revenue and our profits all grow accordingly.”
The CEO then pointed to the need to not only create great content in order to bring more viewers to Netflix but also to deepen the fandom surrounding those titles. Ideally, doing so will create a fear that viewers will miss out on something culturally significant if they don’t watch Netflix, which is exactly the type of dedication Sarandos is aiming for.
“We got to make content that people love,” Sarandos said. “We have to make it so great that they want to talk about it, which kind of creates a FOMO effect around the world. And if you do it really, really well, you get richly rewarded from fans.”
He used “Stranger Things” as an example, and singled out the stage show that Netflix has commissioned to explain how the streamer can surround its most popular titles not only with merchandise, but experiences that keep fans engaged with shows and movies even a given series hasn’t released new episodes for multiple years. “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is currently running in London and will make its Broadway debut in the spring.
“There’s monetization there, but really the value of that is this kind of generational love of the brand of ‘Stranger Things,’” he explained.
Netflix has the luxury of thinking expansively about its content, thanks to its status as the largest and most profitable streaming service in the business. Those milestones don’t mean that the streamer has no goals for the future, however, boosting viewership through the successful marketing of titles like “Stranger Things,” “Bridgerton,” “Squid Game,” and others is one of the most important things on the platform’s to-do list.
Netflix
Netflix is a leading subscription-based video streaming service that offers on-demand access to an extensive library of over 3,000 movies, 2,000+ TV shows, and a growing collection of acclaimed Netflix originals. Renowned for producing groundbreaking content, Netflix has become a cultural powerhouse with hit originals like “Stranger Things,” “Wednesday,” “Squid Game,” “The Crown,” “Tiger King,” “Bridgerton,” “The Witcher,” and “Black Mirror.”