Experts note that the Cinematch recommendation system developed by Netflix is one of the most effective. The company keeps the details of its operation secret, but the general principles are quite clear. When creating an account on the service, the user is immediately asked to mark several favorite films. Based on this selection, he will be offered feeds to watch. In the future, you can mark the content you have watched with hearts or dislikes, the algorithm will take them into account when forming a list of recommendations.
Smart Netflix offers are formed based on many parameters: what time the user enters the service, what films he watched, for how long, where he was, his gender, age, and other data. All films on Netflix before they are shown to the visitor are first analyzed by special employees who create a description of the content, add the necessary marks and tags to it. Such preparation allows you to find the necessary films using a search even for very vague requests, for example, “A film about the war in Rwanda.”
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Netflix processes information about users and content in order to select relevant information and offer truly interesting films using special mathematical algorithms. In doing so, it takes into account not only the content of previously viewed content, but also when it was viewed. The newer the information, the more weight it has in the algorithm. At the same time, material corresponding to significant dates of a particular country can be offered, for example, films relevant for Independence Day in the USA.
Cinematch analyzes both directly stated information and indirect data. If after watching a movie the user added it to favorites, this clearly indicates a positive rating and will be taken into account when forming recommendations. But if the user watched an entire season of a series in one day without marking it as a favorite, the algorithm will take this fact into account in a similar way.
How does a recommender system work?
Cinematch also processes data on customer groups. Naturally, they are formed on the basis of certain common features for all users included in segments, of which there are more than 2,000 on Netflix. Accordingly, the content of recommendations is influenced by the preferences of not only a given user, but also other customers included in his group.
It is significant that you can easily find resources for watching movies for free on the Internet, while 200 million users registered a paid account on Netflix in 2020 alone. Cinematch played a significant role in this.