The secret of Netflix, the ‘glocal’ strategy to keep streaming afloat, is deciphered by a team of Spanish researchers

In December premieres Berlinthe long-awaited prequel to father’s housel, one of Netflix’s biggest hits, the most watched Spanish series of all time, purchased from Atresmedia. The final chapter premiered in 2021, a few weeks after the North American company began broadcasting The squid gamethe South Korean series that became the most viewed content on the platform.

These successes are far from accidental. “It’s not that people suddenly really like a series. It is the result of a very careful strategy of recommendations, dubbing, a marketing very close, to display the content in a thousand ways so that you finally see it,” said the researcher of the GAME research group, Elena Neira, quoted by the scientific information site Eureka alert.

Neira is a Collaborating Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and co-author of a scientific article published this summer that addresses the so-called “Netflix’s global strategy”; that is, in the commitment to produce and serve non-English language content created outside the United States.

The article shows that, Between June 2021 and December 2022, non-English series represented 38% of the most watched series on the platform in more than fifty countries.

The study, of which UOC professors Judith Clares Gavilán and Jordi Sánchez Navarro are also authors, reveals the keys to the relocation of the company’s productions at a time when Netflix, after the pandemic bubble, is the only online video streaming platform that does not . lose money.

It’s not that people suddenly love a series very much. It is the result of a very careful strategy of recommendations, dubbing, very precise marketing, of presenting the content in a thousand ways so that you finally see it.

According to Neira, specialist in new audiovisual distribution models, Netflix’s glocal strategy responds to the need to be more profitable, as It is much cheaper to produce in Spain or South Korea, for example.

This is also the case with this strategy strengthens your brand image and facilitates comply with the European directive that requires 30% of catalog content to be created in Europe.

To understand how all this content is produced and distributed in non-English languages, the three UOC experts used data the company has published on the Netflix Top 10 and Netflix TechBlog websites. According to Neira, Netflix is ​​the platform that offers the most information in a context of great opacity. “There is increasing pressure on platforms to be more transparent.” In addition, they interviewed company employees and also used other sources of specialized information.

Among his discoveries Netflix succeeds thanks to content indexing and user monitoring. “Netflix is ​​not an audiovisual media company. It’s a technology company. Back when it was a DVD company, it already started storing information and learning things. When he started his online reproduction business in 2007, he had a lot of information and integrated all this technological part into his daily life,” Neira recalls.

Netflix uses its ability to handle big data to very well understand and classify all the content it offers, as well as the tastes of its customers. As a result, offers recommendations to convince the audience and based on no fewer than eighty thousand microgenres “that expand the content’s touchpoints with people,” Neira explains.

“If Netflix knows you don’t like political drama, but you like powerful women, it can recommend it to you House of cards for the second reason,” he illustrates. Likewise, the platform may recommend non-English content to an individual for many reasons consistent with theirs view history and algorithm calculations, regardless of where that content is produced. “It’s like creating revolving doors where each person connects to different aspects of the content. And that doesn’t just happen with what is American: also with what is local,” he summarizes.

Furthermore, the success of Netflix’s global strategy is also due to: series of very careful actions, both globally and locally, to develop projects, classify target groups or challenge people to talk about the content.

“That ‘glocal’ strategy has removed the barriers that traditionally existed in the market and made it very difficult to purchase foreign products”, Neira highlights, giving as an example the company’s production center in Madrid, Netflix’s largest film area in Europe, which has created many jobs.

However, he emphasizes the dark side: employment on platforms causes job insecurity and its sustainability is questionable: “They are very fast shoots.” Hours and hours of content with a very short commercial cycle. “Content is increasingly volatile and this leaves an economic, personal and environmental footprint.”

The homogenization of content, Neira notes, leads to the denaturalization of the local, such as European cinema. “We produce a lot here, but it is content whose distinguishing features are not European in the strict sense of the word,” the expert emphasizes.

Neira also points to what has already been defined as cultural conformism: “The threshold for active search is greatly reduced. I always tell people that if they’re going to watch something on Netflix, Don’t decide what you are going to watch within Netflix, but first inquire outside the platform”.

Be that as it may, online audiovisual content streaming companies are not in a stable period. Netflix is ​​​​the only one that has no losses, but announced a smaller investment for this year. Neira predicts that “the future lies in looking at the past, in trying to make the content more sustainable and live longer.”