Survival of the Clickest: How Netflix Will Conquer the World

For all those out there that love Netflix,  we recommend checking out this fascinating Wired article that offers a behind-the-scenes view of the Netflix content and personalization machine. It’s rare glimpse into how the innovative company thinks about, and exploits, customer data.  The article highlights how data has been key to the company’s success.

Core to ActionIQ and Netflix is a shared philosophy on how to think about and value customer data. “There’s a mountain of data that we have at our disposal,” said Todd Yellin, VP of product innovation, Netflix. “Geography, age, and gender? We put that in the garbage heap. Where you live is not that important.”

ActionIQ founder and CEO Tasso Argyros shared similar sentiments in his recent post on personalization: “The future lies in behavioral micro-segmentation – being able to create segments that contain only the people that truly care about a specific product. It could be what they browsed. It could be a question they asked customer service three months ago. Perhaps they bought a similar product offline last year and it’s time for an update. Or maybe, just maybe, the one or two emails that they truly engaged with had to do with products in this category.”

Freedom from generic data points such as geography, gender and age allows Netflix and ActionIQ customers to cluster data based on behavioral segmentation and what people like. Not their zip code. As a result, recommendations are sharper and more relevant to the consumer.

Check out Netflix’s Grand, Daring, Maybe Crazy Plan to Conquer the World on wired.com.