Netflix’s technology and development budget has gone from $163m in 2010 to a whopping $1.83bn ten years later – an increase of over 1,000%. Certainly, large chunks of this increase can be apportioned to storage, content delivery and staff costs but what are they spending the rest of the money on? That was the topic up for discussion at this week’s OTT Question Time on Thursday 21 October, 4pm UK.
Together with Matt Westrup, SVP Technology & Operations, EMEA, at A+E Networks UK, Tom Williams, CEO of Ostmodern, Gulliver Smithers, former SVP Product & Technology at Sony Pictures International and now CTO at RampRate IT, and Arash Pendari, founder and Creative Director at Vionlabs, we also analysed:
- Netflix’s tech spend as a proportion of revenues
- Its attitude to build vs. buy
- Upkeep of its content recommendation system
- Mapping budget increases with platform expansion and international launches
- And the lessons that other OTT service providers can learn from Netflix’s approach
**
ABOUT KAUSER KANJI
Kauser Kanji has been working in online video for 19 years, formerly at Virgin Media, ITN and NBC Universal, and founded VOD Professional in 2011. He has since completed major OTT projects for, amongst others, A+E Networks, the BBC, BBC Studios, Channel 4, DR (Denmark), Liberty Global, Netflix, Sony Pictures, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and UKTV. He now writes industry analyses, hosts an online debate show, OTT Question Time, as well as its in-person sister event, OTT Question Time Live.