Netflix & Thrill: Behind the Streaming Giant's Creator Strategy (HBBIP #53)

Each week, we'll bring you select insights from our newsletter, How to Build Brands and Influence People (HBBIP). To have all of these insights delivered directly to your inbox, subscribe today! 

Hello, my name is Alex Rawitz, and I don’t watch television.

As with my running habits, which I’ve mentioned once or twice before, this lack of televisual enjoyment is something that I clearly want other people to know about me. Not because it makes me better than people who watch television, though it does, but because it’s a surefire conversation-starter—or sometimes, even more usefully, a conversation-ender.

In this case, it’s a blog post-starter, because I want to talk about the streaming industry.

The Research & Insights team at CreatorIQ recently debuted our latest report, “Winning Strategies in Streaming: How Industry Leaders are Harnessing Creator Marketing.” The report, from Senior Research & Insights Manager Zach Donnenfield, dives deep into how creators are driving growth and combating churn for top streaming platforms. We highlight data and trends relevant not only to streaming brands, but to anyone who wants to learn more about how creator marketing is fueling a sea change across various industries.

While the report covers multiple players in the space, including Spotify, Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, iHeartRadio, and Peacock, for the purposes of this blog post, I want to zoom in on Netflix. As a globally known brand and an exemplar of the streaming industry at large, I thought it would be illuminating to take a look at the strategies that have helped Netflix rise to the top. Plus, it might give me some new ideas for shows to not watch.

Sound good? Doesn’t matter—this blog post is going to start autoplaying in ten seconds anyway.

The Top Brand of All Time (Of the Week): Netflix

For what I’m pretty sure is the first time in HBBIP history, I get to screenshot someone else’s auto-generated Google Sheets graph, rather than making my own. Thanks to Zach for keeping the dream alive!

Netflix Growth Over Time: 2019 - 2023

Here we have Netflix’s EMV patterns from 2019 to 2023: a little up, a little down, but overall trending in the right direction and staying above the $1B EMV threshold, which is a pretty good place to be.

What’s more, thanks to the characteristically amazing work of Caroline Goh, CreatorIQ’s Creative & Web Designer, we even have a ~fancy~ version of this same graph:

Netflix Growth Over Time: 2019 - 2023 (fancy version)

Behold the spiffiness!

While Netflix experienced an EMV decline from 2022 to 2023, things are back on the upswing for 2024 so far. From January to August, Netflix collected $1.1B EMV, an 18% YoY improvement. This jibed with steady improvements to the brand’s community size, post count, engagements, and impressions:

Metrics and their YoY Improvement

So we know that after a period of fluctuations, Netflix is back on the up-and-up. But what deeper trends can we glean from the data? And what key moments have stood out from along Netflix’s broader trajectory?

Let’s go to the tape:

A Tale of Tiers

Over the course of the five years in question—2019 to 2023—Netflix’s gains were fueled in part by powerhouse creators, or individuals who boast more than 1M followers on their primary social channel. This tier increased their EMV contributions from $528.0M in 2019 to $695.1M in 2023. Powerhouse creators often included the actors starring in Netflix programs, or the official fan pages for these actors and programs.

At the same time, we also observed a counterbalancing trend. Key to Netflix’s success during the pandemic—aside from, you know, the whole world being stuck inside—was the rise of micro-creators, who boast fewer than 100k followers on their primary social channel. Their consistent activity led to a 67% YoY increase in impressions in 2020, but despite all that, I still didn’t watch any television that year.

In all, Netflix’s ability to retain key creators during a tumultuous era helped the brand maintain high levels of engagement, even as other streaming platforms struggled. Netflix’s total engagements grew from 724.9M in 2019 to 1.2B in 2023, with the brand on track to exceed that total in 2024.

Original Programming Prevails

As you might expect, when it comes to having impactful social content, it helps to be a brand that specializes in content creation. Throughout the five years monitored, and probably for as long as Netflix will continue to exist, the brand’s most engaging content proved to be promotion of original series, movies, and reality TV. Major hits like Stranger Things, The Witcher, Squid Game, Emily in Paris, and Bridgerton. Especially Bridgerton.

I may not be able to tell you much about these shows—a quick Google search told me that Squid Game isn’t what I thought it would be—but I can tell you that creators had a lot to say about them.

Take a look at Netflix’s top 25 EMV-driving hashtags from 2024 so far and see if you can spot any major content trends:

Netflix's Top 25 EMV Driving Hashtags 

That’s 14 hashtags name-dropping Bridgerton—which, to my shock and disappointment, is not about particularly heavy bridges. This is further proof that, by virtue of its original programming, Netflix has an in-built content engine the likes of which few brands can match. However, Netflix also deserves credit for turning this programming into full-fledged social media and cultural phenomena. After all, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Explaining the Drop

You might recall that part of the EMV graph, either the fancy or unfancy version, where things hit a bit of a snag. What happened there? Let’s take a closer look:

Netflix Total EMV for 2023

Hmm…something grim in summer 2023. Probably not just people going outside more often.

Well, as it turned out, in May 2023, Netflix became the first major streaming platform to implement a password-sharing policy, aiming to limit account use by location and device. The policy marked a significant shift in the streaming industry, signaling a crackdown on a practice that had been taken for granted among users.

The policy proved pretty unpopular amongst the corner of the internet that’s thrifty, a little lazy, and loves to watch TV. As it turns out, this corner is pretty much all of the internet.

Following the crackdown, Netflix experienced a notable decline in its total EMV, which decreased by 15% YoY in 2023. The most significant drop occurred between May and July 2023, with a sharp 36% decline that signaled parallel 48% and 46% declines in impressions and engagement. Additionally, this downturn coincided with a 27% contraction in Netflix’s community when those unwilling to adopt the policy stopped watching Netflix content.

The drought continued through October before gradually fading away, and now things are back to healthy growth again. After setting a record for monthly EMV in January 2023 with $122.2M, it took the brand until February 2024 ($140.5M EMV) to reach and exceed that mark, which it’s done another three times since. And with creators and consumers deciding that the content they love is worth a single-household password, Netflix looks to continue setting records in months still to come.

Roll The Credits

That’s it for this week, folks. If we’ve learned one thing, it’s that you should check out our full streaming report right here for more great insights on the top performers within one of the world’s most exciting industries. And if we’ve learned a second thing, it’s that I should apparently check out Bridgerton. Can someone lend me their password?

To get all of these stories, plus much more, delivered to your inbox weekly, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.