How Kevin Spacey and Netflix are winning the analytics game

You must be living under a basic cable rock lately if you haven’t heard all the hype surrounding “House of Cards”. It is one of the most talked about new releases from Netflix; even the President himself is excited. Without giving away any spoilers, let’s just say it’s living up to the hype. (Zoe what?)

As the clock struck midnight on Valentine’s Day, people all over the world started binge watching the series while Netflix captured all of the analytics. In the Netflix war room the engineers could tell, in real time, who was watching, how they were watching and for what length of time.

The first season of “House of Cards” was 13 hours long and Jeremy Edberg, Netflix’s Reliability Architect looked to see if anybody was finishing the season in that time. Edberg found that, “one person finished in just three minutes longer than there is content. So basically, three total minutes of break in roughly 13 hours.” That’s not only a hardcore fan, that’s hardcore analytics.

The “House of Cards” success wasn’t just a fluke. Netflix leveraged their incredible granular analytics of what people watch to decide what original programming to buy. Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said that, “we already knew that Netflix members like political dramas, that they like serialized dramas, that they are fans of Kevin Spacey and that they like David Fincher.” The company utilized this knowledge to their benefit.

So what does all this streaming television success say about the future of traditional television, and even more importantly, traditional advertising? Critics are split on the outlook, some think that as millennials age, they’ll watch more primetime television, but many others disagree. Today’s TV viewer can order from a video streaming service, record shows to watch later and fast-forward through commercials. It’s our jobs as marketers to start focusing on non-traditional mediums sooner rather than later.