The Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer of Netflix, Gregory Peters, in the fourth quarter earnings call on Tuesday said “there’s a lot of interest amongst” users in India to “try” its platform. Netflix, an American Over-the-Top (OTT) platform on Tuesday reported its fourth quarter financial results with the company announcing that it now has over 200 million paid users. Peters in the earnings call said that “millions of people” had “access” to the platform with its “StreamFest.” Initially teased by the company in late October, the StreamFest enabled the users in India with no active subscription to access the platform for no additional cost.
Netflix Now Analyzing StreamFest Exercise
While the StreamFest was initially set to be a two-day exercise, the company in December extended the promotional period beyond its 48-hour window.
“So StreamFest in India, I mean the primary learning, which is very evident, is that there's a lot of interest amongst consumers in India to try Netflix,” Peters said in the earnings call on Tuesday. “We had millions of people that had access for a 48- hour period to the service. And now we go through the more difficult part of actually analyzing how that interest through the specific tactic translates into sustained incremental growth.”
Peters said that the company is still “working through the details” of the StreamFest exercise and that it will “inform” users and shareholders on whether StreamFest will be expanded to other regions.
“And obviously, based on what we see there, we'll inform how we think about how we leverage that tactic again or how do we improve on it, what are places we think it might be leverageable,” Peters said in the earnings call on Tuesday.
Netflix “Shuffle Play” to Expand to Other Regions
The Netflix COO also said that the “Shuffle Play” feature that enabled users to “skip browsing” and “instantly play” a random title would be expanded to other regions across the world. It is reported that the Shuffle Play feature has been in testing phase since July, 2020.
“But I think an even better example of that is a new feature that we've been testing and we're going to now roll out globally because it's really working for us, where our members can basically indicate to us that they just want to skip browsing entirely, click one button and we'll pick a title for them just to instantly play,” Peters said in the earnings call on Tuesday. “And that's a great mechanism that's worked quite well for our members in that situation.”
In a letter to the shareholders, the company highlighted that it added 8.5 million paid users in its fourth quarter with the full year paid membership additions hitting 37 million. The company also said that it “achieved” US$25 billion in annual revenue, translating to a 24% year-over-year growth while its operating profit increased 76% to US$4.6 billion.
The Netflix COO also said that the company is “improving the ability” for its members to select the languages while browsing content.
“We're improving the ability for our members to tell us what languages they want in terms of the content when they're browsing,” Peters said in the earnings call on Tuesday. “And there are sort of these different scenarios. There's a scenario maybe when you're by yourself and if you're multilingual, that can result in sort of different choices. If you're in a multigenerational household, then all of a sudden, that might shift how you think about like what titles you want to present and what language it is.”
Further, Peters said that the company is looking to expand the payment options along with the partnerships to make the platform “more accessible.”
“The methods of payments that we know we need to expand, and we're constantly working to add more of those and make those more effective, the partnerships we have that make the service more accessible and more immediate, easier for members to find out and sign up,” Peters said in the earnings call on Tuesday. “So there's tons of things that we're looking at.”
