NEW YORK: Netflix, the video-streaming service, is using marketing techniques like non-sequential storytelling to target consumers during digital "micro-moments".
Kelly Bennett, Netflix's chief marketing officer, discussed this subject at a session at Advertising Week 2015 in New York City.
"Never before in human history have people had so many choices about what to watch," said Bennett. (For more, including further details of this strategy, read Warc's exclusive report: Netflix targets marketing "micro-moments".)
And with consumers flitting between channels ranging from Instagram and Facebook to HBO GO and YouTube, holding their attention becomes more difficult.
"More and more now, when we have these micro-moments to connect with people, it's about context," he told the Advertising Week attendees.
"With the attention spans being lower, just due to the volume of video people have to watch, we've used the data as a way of creating a feedback loop of understanding what people are liking and what they're not liking."
One form this experimentation has taken involves breaking attempts at storytelling down into short-form bursts that move beyond entertainment-industry norms.
"We're trying to figure out ways to sequentially deliver smaller pieces of video across multiple channels," Bennett reported.
"So instead of trying to tell a story – a typical movie trailer has a three-act arc – in two-minutes-and-twenty seconds, how do we break that up into 5s and 10s and 15s?
"How do we combine that Instagram moment of ten seconds of video with the 20-second TrueView I can show them online, and use that data to understand how they're sequentially moving through the messages that I'm putting out there?"
Moreover, Netflix has discovered, these messages do not always have to be seen in the traditional order to make a beneficial impression on consumers.
"How do we listen to optimise for that sequence?" said Bennett. "We might think the right sequence is linear.
"Sometimes we find when consumers interact out of sequence, it actually pushes down that conversion funnel faster. It's very interesting."
Kelly Bennett, Netflix's chief marketing officer, discussed this subject at a session at Advertising Week 2015 in New York City.
"Never before in human history have people had so many choices about what to watch," said Bennett. (For more, including further details of this strategy, read Warc's exclusive report: Netflix targets marketing "micro-moments".)
And with consumers flitting between channels ranging from Instagram and Facebook to HBO GO and YouTube, holding their attention becomes more difficult.
"More and more now, when we have these micro-moments to connect with people, it's about context," he told the Advertising Week attendees.
"With the attention spans being lower, just due to the volume of video people have to watch, we've used the data as a way of creating a feedback loop of understanding what people are liking and what they're not liking."
One form this experimentation has taken involves breaking attempts at storytelling down into short-form bursts that move beyond entertainment-industry norms.
"We're trying to figure out ways to sequentially deliver smaller pieces of video across multiple channels," Bennett reported.
"So instead of trying to tell a story – a typical movie trailer has a three-act arc – in two-minutes-and-twenty seconds, how do we break that up into 5s and 10s and 15s?
"How do we combine that Instagram moment of ten seconds of video with the 20-second TrueView I can show them online, and use that data to understand how they're sequentially moving through the messages that I'm putting out there?"
Moreover, Netflix has discovered, these messages do not always have to be seen in the traditional order to make a beneficial impression on consumers.
"How do we listen to optimise for that sequence?" said Bennett. "We might think the right sequence is linear.
"Sometimes we find when consumers interact out of sequence, it actually pushes down that conversion funnel faster. It's very interesting."
Data sourced from Warc
