Why Netflix Allows Video Download Thanks To India, But Won't Let You See Their Full Catalogue

It's the world's most popular video streaming service and even accounts for 15% of the entire internet traffic at any given second. Like me, you'd think that they had everything figured out before their launch into India. We would both be wrong.

With long commutes and patchy connectivity, it's a challenge for any streaming service to offer a world-class user experience in India. And don't even get started on the piracy problem. How would Netflix survive?

Thinking mobile

I am meeting with Michael Spiegelman, VP of Global Product Innovation at Netflix, who tells me that they had been thinking about offline downloads for some time, but it wasn't until Netflix officially launched in India in January 2016 that it saw how India was addicted to mobile streaming that Netflix got really serious about the offline download feature.

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"Based on our research in India, talking to existing and potential customers here, who told us they liked watching streaming video during their daily commute or while travelling between cities, that's when we started asking ourselves how we could make that experience better," recollects Spiegelman, who's been at Netflix for over eight years now.

"So we developed 'Download' as a feature and launched it around the world two years ago, but it was really something that truly originated from us thinking about the Netflix experience here in India."

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Another big part of delivering streaming video over cellular networks or for mobile viewing? Making sure that episode of Sacred Games or Lust Stories plays without drop in quality and incessant buffering. This required some more unique engineering by Netflix.

"We've invested in mobile encodes, making sure they are truly mobile-specific. And then there are efforts to bring more Netflix content servers here into the Indian market, so the content resides closer to where viewers are, thereby reducing latency," Spiegelman reveals. "I think that's one of the things we've learned from India, that for a lot of people the mobile experience isn't just part of their experience, but it's a huge chunk of their Netflix time, so we want to make sure that's first class."

Behind the scenes

Netflix may have an outward resemblance of a video streaming service, but it's definitely more than that. It analyses an insane amount of user data to accurately predict content that matches your taste and what you'd want to watch next.

"I think what people don't realise enough is that pretty much everything that they see on Netflix is personalised for them," mentions Michael Spiegelman. "Everything from big banners at the top of the Netflix app to rows that people see in the categories below are all personalised uniquely to a user's taste. We even personalise your custom list so that when you add content to it we try and surface things we think you're most likely to watch right now."

Both content on the page, as well as all the rows and categories, and other custom pages inside, everything is driven by machine learning. The different teams inside Netflix are constantly figuring out what new machine learning models they can apply to all the user behaviour they capture, so the title you really want to watch is the first thing you see when you enter the service. And that's a huge part of Netflix's secret sauce and what they essentially do.

Capturing your attention

On top of all the hardcore engineering and technical stuff, Netflix plays the role of a behavioural design company, influencing user behaviour without them even realising. How viewers respond to different in-app posters for the same title is a pretty big area of continuing research within Netflix, Spiegelman tells me.

"We show five or six images for each title in Netflix's catalogue and see what resonates most with people," says Spiegelman. This is done to analyse how people get influenced through images, and how does that drive viewing of that piece of content.

"The results of this constant learning keeps surprising us. Initially, people recognised faces and that helped drive a lot of interest. Sometimes you think having a star's face on the image would be a big draw, but that wasn't the case - especially with War Machine, for example." Everyone thought that with War Machine just putting Brad Pitt's image on the title would make people click on it, but that didn't happen, recalls Spiegelman.

"Sometimes what worked was maybe a highlighter on the text, or featuring the ensemble cast - as we found out on Orange Is The New Black - or focusing just on emotions, bringing the action to life or capturing humour that really connects on the title image to make people dive in."

Making future bets

Throughout my conversation with Spiegelman, I started to realise how data beats at the heart of everything Netflix does. At a macro level, it even influences what content Netflix adds in their catalogue.

"We try to get as much global rights as we can for all the content we have in our service," informs Spiegelman, to make sure as much content is available to everyone around the world equally. "Then we also look at data to see what people are playing in a particular market, and how that may lead us to other content we can get rights to that fits into their consumption behaviour. So whether it's new content we create or license, we definitely use data to forecast what the market wants."

I wonder about Spiegelman's thoughts on content piracy. Recent stats and shows like Game Of Thrones have shown that piracy is not only alive but thriving. Isn't Netflix worried?

"We work with consortiums to see how we can deter piracy," Spiegelman suggests. "But honestly, I think the best defense we have against piracy is to make the user experience on Netflix great." It's a combination of great content and great product experience that ultimately helps curb piracy, he says. "Whether it's quality of streaming, ability to watch across multiple devices, audio quality, subtitles, offering a great experience in a convenient package helps people gravitate towards watching content on our service."

So convenience is a big feature driving Netflix's user experience team. How to make accessing Netflix and finding content even more easier?

"Voice search and voice UI is definitely something we're looking into," Spiegelman reveals. "We are also trying to work with different partners like TV manufacturers, that already has voice search enabled, and figure out how do we play a role in that. So that anytime you go to Netflix, you can just speak in your natural voice to search for content, and that's definitely an area of active experimentation."

Lastly, a personal rant

This is when I ask something that's bugging me about Netflix right from day one. Why doesn't a company that prides in making things convenient to access doesn't let you see its entire catalog at once? I mean 'why?!'

Spiegelman laughs before replying, "We've heard this exact question from several people, why don't we just create an easy browse for all of our titles. When we tried this experience we realised it quickly becomes very overwhelming, especially as the service grows browsing through and finding what they want becomes difficult for people. Also we don't want it to become a chore to browse Netflix."

Spiegelman further says how Netflix's whole focus is to try and figure out how to put the right content in front of you, which you would want to watch, and spend less time finding it and more time actually watching it.

I don't like the answer. I still believe there should be a switch to flip that lets power users - who know what they're doing - to be able to browse through, for example, Netflix India's entire catalogue and pick something that they like to watch on random, and not necessarily what Netflix wants to recommend.

But I'm not in the mood to argue. As the interview ends, a pop-up goes off on my phone's Netflix app. It's added a new show that it thinks I might like to watch. Challenge accepted, indeed.