Industry Insights: Netflix unveils a major UI redesign to enhance user experience and reports on ad-tier success and future plans, while movie release windows lengthen and Max goes back to being HBO Max once more .
Netflix unveils biggest UI redesign for a decade
[Netflix]
Netflix is ignoring the old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” by rolling out a new version of the User Interface that has helped take it to over 300 million subscribers around the world. If it hasn’t reached you yet, you can get a look at the new interface below.
The presentation also features Chief Product Officer, Eunice Kim, explaining some of the rationale behind the new UI.
“Our members do a lot of eye gymnastics when they’re scrolling down and right and going back and forth between rows and title details on the home page,” she says. “And this make it hard to absorb enough information to understand what is unique about each title. In the new experience we’re putting all the information you need to make an informed choice front and centre.”
Callouts such as “Emmy Award Winner” or “#1 in TV Shows” are going to be featured more prominently alongside a raft of new features including:
- More Visible Shortcuts: Until now, shortcuts to Search and My List were somewhat hidden (Netflix’s words) on the left-hand side. These are now moving to the top of the page where they’re more noticeable and easier to access.
- Better Realtime Recommendations: These are apparently becoming “more responsive to your moods and interests in the moment,” indicating that there is an increased amount of contextual data and Ai analysis being used to drive them
- Elevated Design: The new homepage has a clean and modern design that is certainly less cluttered.
To accommodate all this, the ‘Categories’ and ‘New & Popular’ shortcuts have both been deleted. The last two interactive episodes on the platform, Blackmirror: Bandersnatch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend have also disappeared, highlighting the fact that not all new innovations necessarily stick.
There are some nice touches here, such as color theming which echoes the colors from the billboard artwork in the homepage background for a more unified design.
The mobile version is also getting some arguably further reaching features. Anew vertical feed filled with clips of Netflix shows and movies that better fit the mobile format is also being trialed, and then there’s genAI.
“We’re also exploring ways to bring Generative AI to our members’ discovery experience, starting with a search feature on iOS that is a small opt-in beta,” writes the company about its new liaison with OpenAI. “This will allow members to search for shows and movies using natural, conversational phrases like “I want something funny and upbeat.”
The redesign has been tested with various groups in various markets since 2024 and seems to be much more than simply window dressing. Rather it gives streamer room to expand into new areas, notably games and live content.
“Our current TV experience was built for streaming shows and movies,” Kim told reporters in a press briefing on the new design. “This one is designed to give us a more flexible canvas now and in the future. Take live and games, for example, with on demand you can watch at your convenience. With a live event like the NFL on Christmas Day, you want to catch the action the moment that it happens, so we need to let you know when to tune in. And we are always adding new characters and challenges to our games, so we need better ways to feature these updates on the home page. That requires us to do more than just tell you when something is new on Netflix, it needs to pull you into the thrill of watching or playing at exactly the right time.”
Why this matters: As the market leader in most territories around the world, where Netflix leads others follow. We can expect to see a rash of new redesigns being greenlit as a result. We’ve written extensively about the importance of the UI and recently about the no-code tools that enable quick iteration, and being able to adapt quickly and not be left behind will be important.
Netflix’s ad tier accelerates and evolves
One more Netflix story, this one from the recent upfront presentations to US advertisers, where the company revealed that its ad tier now reaches more than 94 million users around the world each month – a big increase from the 40 million it reported in May 2024 and the 70 million it revealed last November.
In the US, Netflix’s ad tier costs $7.99 a month compared to $17.99 for the standard plan. A similar differential exists around the world, so no real surprise that the ad-tier numbers have effectively doubled in a year. Netflix no longer gives exact figures for the number of its subscribers, but the ad-supported number probably now represents close to a third of its total user base.
Amy Reinhard (above), Netflix’s president of advertising, said the streaming service has “the most engaged audience anywhere,” with subscribers on its ad-supported tier spending an average of 41 hours per month on the service.
In the back-end, its in-house ad service will be rolled out to all countries with ad-supported plans by next month, enabling Netflix to accelerate the rollout of new features. This includes a new modular framework for ad formats that the company says “will use generative AI to instantly marry advertisers’ ads with the worlds of its shows.”
Details of how this will work are scarce, though at the presentation Reinhard unveiled the first capability. This featured interactive midroll and pause formats that build custom advertising creative with added overlays, call to action, second screen buttons, and more “to serve the right ad to the right member at the right time.” These formats will be available by 2026 in all ad-supported countries.
Why this matters: Ads are now an integral part of the streaming offering and they are getting more sophisticated all the time. Service providers need to be aware of new developments and be tapped into future proof ad-tech.
Studios delaying movie releases to streaming
While we might all have become used to 45-day movie release windows post Covid, the landscape is shifting again. According to research by Ampere Analytics, 55% of US studio movies took 90 days or more to hit subscription streaming platforms in 2024.
Box office revenue is down in key overseas markets like China, and remains fragile in the domestic market. Meanwhile, there is potential for tariff-related disruption to come. As a result, studios are trying to make as much money out of theatrical releases as possible.
The rough rule seems to be the bigger the budget, the longer the delay. Widely-released movies distributed domestically by the five major US studios last year took an average of 87 days post-release in cinemas to reach subscription streaming platforms. By comparison, in 2022 only a quarter of such movies took 90 days or more to reach streaming.
Alice Thorpe, Research Manager at Ampere Analysis: “By and large, studios have weaned US audiences off the expectation that they need only wait a month or so for the latest blockbusters on streaming. The domestic theatrical market was down 4 percent year-on-year in 2024 and remains somewhat fragile. Studio movies are still available for premium rental or purchase at home much earlier than was the norm pre-pandemic to maximize transactional revenues.”
Why this matters: Streamers will no longer be able to surf along at the end of the initial wave of marketing and interest of a movie release. Instead, they will have to reset and start again to build interest in new releases on their own platforms. Also, with potentially larger cinematic audiences, viewing demand may be slightly weaker than before.
Max is dead! Long live HBO Max!
[Variety]
Finally, Warner Bros. Discovery has reversed two years of strategy and renamed Max as HBO Max once more. Realizing that the entire internet was about to have a field day at its expense, it got out in front of the curve with some clever marketing such as this tweet from a hastily reactivated X account.
Variety puts the reason for the switch down to an admission by the company that it cannot be all things to all people. Max was meant to paint the picture of a broad proposition such as Netflix, while HBO has a distinct audience at the higher-end of the spectrum. As a result, this feels like the company is reining in its ambitions slightly.
Warner Bros. Discovery president and CEO of streaming JB Perrette said: “We will continue to focus on what makes us unique — not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families. It’s really not subjective, not even controversial — our programming just hits different.”
Why this matters: Brands are important. You mess with them at your peril…
