Netflix has one of the best engineering blogs. In one of the posts, they explain their Ad Tech stack. Netflix’s focus is on creative optimization which makes sense, after all, they sell content.
What it was surprising to read is their marketing goal: “(…) what we are most interested in is having our marketing focus on people who have not yet made up their mind about Netflix.” Basically, they are spending their ad dollars on trying to convince the people who are more expensive to convince.
Even though their Ad Tech architecture seems to go in the right direction (dynamic creatives, budget optimization, multiple channels) their marketing goal is not.
Instead of leveraging the large base of fans (I’m one of them) that will happily spread the word and convince their family and friends to subscribe, they are going after those who really don’t care about Netflix yet.
This is a good example of having the right technology, and the wrong marketing. It is far cheaper, and far more fun, to spend your budget encouraging people that already love your brand to tell their friends, to give them something worth to talk about.
