refreshes, the cover of this video looks good, click in and take a look.
Every day, hundreds of millions of people around the world repeat this operation like you, lying in bed to read short videos or watch TV series to relax.
Short videos and streaming applications can always launch "what you like" in refreshing, and there will always be a video cover that just hits your preferences. In such a loop, time passes by.
hours, 2 hours, 3 hours, and the time just passed.
How do short videos and streaming applications do it?
Netflix once introduced the relevant principles in his own technical blog, how it makes you "can't stop" through covers.
"cover algorithm" that makes you unable to stop
Before streaming services such as Netflix became popular, the movie posters we saw were like this, the scenes and characters formed intertextuality, and the character of the protagonist Walter Walter Wheat in "Breaking Bad" was fully revealed.
▲ "Breaking Bad". Picture from: Netflix
Or this, the large-sized "Silence of the Lambs" movie poster, people can intuitively pay attention to the moths in the poster, which actually consists of 7 women, implying that the criminals in the play are eager to "break out of the cocoon and become a butterfly" and become women.
▲"Silence of the Lambs". Picture from: Douban
Online videos were in the early days, this creative poster naturally became the cover of the movie, but now it is difficult for you to see similar creative covers on Netflix. The cover of the video has become simpler and more direct. Most of the covers are a movie title with the protagonist.
seems to be an "uncommon sense" thing. Shouldn't using a movie creative poster as a video cover more attractive?
The answer is no, the Netflix team explained in a technology blog.
The carrier of streaming is a device such as TV, mobile phone, and tablet. The viewer may not notice the poster with too many details, and may even directly ignore it.
More importantly, there are too many choices for movies and episodes on streaming, and people stay for a series too short.
This may be blamed for being a human being, your ability is really too strong. According to MIT official publication "MIT News", the human brain processes the images seen by the eyes in just 13 milliseconds.
▲The data label of facial expressions and postures
This is what Netflix does not want to see. No one watches the video content, which means no one is willing to pay to subscribe, so optimizing the video cover has become one of the top priorities of the team.
Compared with ordinary video creators, Netflix's advantage lies in its rich content. It not only acquires a large number of film and series copyrights, but also has many self-made series and movies. The huge user subscription group can also allow them to analyze people's preferences for different series types through user and click data. The same is true for the episode cover of
▲The picture marked with data type
. Based on people's browsing and clicking data, Netflix designed an algorithm for the episode cover - AVA visual analysis.
Generally speaking, Netflix will extract all the frames of the picture contained in the movie or series, collect and analyze each picture data. The data dimensions include brightness, color, contrast, motion blur, lens situation, composition, actors, etc. After
, Netflix will perform hierarchical filtering of these data and select a cover image suitable for display based on user preference data.
▲Diagram of facial expressions and postures
This is an extremely complex process that consumes a lot of computing resources. For example, 1 hour " Strange Things " contains 86,000 frames of pictures. You can imagine the complexity of selecting the cover image from it.
's huge data analysis allows Netflix to better understand people's preferences, and the technical team also listed some intuitive examples in the blog post.
For example, the cover with stable composition and good viewing experience, viewers usually choose the cover with simple characters and movie titles. The cover of the high-scoring series " Women's Prison " gradually evolved according to this rule.
▲ The first and second season covers of "Women's Prison" adjusted according to the data results
Another interesting trend is that viewers usually prefer "bad guys" as the video cover, with a higher click rate. This is what the popular drama " Squid Game " was like before.
▲The same movie highlights the cover of "bad guys" is more popular
Since Netflix spans multiple countries and regions, it will also adjust the video cover according to the cultural dynamics of different regions to get higher clicks and viewing times.
▲People from different regions like different covers
episode covers are not always constant. Netflix will rely on A/B testing to continuously optimize.
It is through continuous optimization of the cover algorithm that Netflix can always recommend content that "means your preferences", and then release the entire episode operation method. There are also cases of staying up late to watch the full season of episodes, which ultimately promotes the continuous increase in Netflix's usage time and boosts subscription rates.
▲ Netflix's A/B test case, the second cover is the best
According to data research agency statisticsta, Netflix already had 222.18 million users at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, making it one of the world's largest streaming media service providers.
relies on algorithms or people
In this era where hundreds of millions of people watch videos every day, the video cover that attracts people to click has become a visual science. In addition to Netflix, many institutions and platforms have also discovered videos with simple characters with larger titles, which can increase click rate.
streaming services are increasing, and there are more platforms to master this trend, and there are more "standard answers" suddenly increase.
▲ Netflix movie cover
When the standard answer is too easy to obtain, its value will naturally decrease rapidly. Although the cover design of simple characters and titles ensures a qualified visual impression, some people think that this sense of routine is too heavy and misses the creative design on the movie poster.
algorithm can help people find standard answers quickly, enable people to find dramas that they may be interested in faster, and help people make quick decisions based on the covers in a bunch of movies. Over time, the choices will be converged, and the personality expression that does not follow the crowd becomes more and more precious. The subscription business model of streaming media platforms such as
Netflix has given birth to a recommendation mechanism with algorithms as the core, allowing people to increase payment rates while watching "addiction". Different products will give birth to different designs.
▲ There are more and more streaming services. Pictures from: Thrillist
B is similar to Netflix, but there are some differences. The similarity is that they all recommend videos to people through algorithms.
The difference is that B station is deeply influenced by community culture. If you observe carefully, you will find that the official copyrighted movies or series in the B station’s recommended information flow do not all use standard answers, such as the cover of "Initial D".
▲ Friends who know the answer, see
in the comment area. This is obviously a work with heavy traces of humans. I have seen many similar cases.
cover is just a picture in the film, forming an interesting intertextuality with the title. Audiences who have watched or understood this movie will most likely understand the answer to the question "I bought a piece __". Combining it with the meme is a combination with the B station community culture.
A few years ago, we talked about B station's most likely to mention keywords such as the second dimension and ghost animals. Now, after a series of expansions, the whole story, Internet meme culture, etc. have become one of the new keywords, from the popularity of "Let the Bullets Fly" to the new memes that change from time to time on the B station's hot list.
▲ "Very Spiritual" and "Let the Bullets Fly" are both popular memes on B.
Of course, whether it is Netflix or B. The premise for such an important cover is that it adopts a multi-column design. If it is a single column information flow, the importance of the cover will be greatly weakened.
The most intuitive example of Douyin . The automatic playback of videos shortens the time people watch the cover. There is only one video as a choice for a whole screen. Swipe up and down instead of clicking, and the audience is always refreshing. The value of the
cover becomes extremely low, and it no longer allows videos to stand out from a bunch of choices.
▲"Brush" Douyin
Or, in other words, the first few seconds of Douyin video is another form of "cover". When the first few seconds of the video are not attractive, people will take a step away. The
algorithm fully reflects the two sides of the technology.
On the one hand, the conclusions drawn based on a large amount of data tests are closer to people's preferences, allowing people to find content that suits their preferences faster, and use covers that suit their preferences to help people make quick choices. On the other hand, over-addiction and convergence of choices have brought many adverse effects. The two overlords of the
mobile platform, iOS and Android, both provide digital health functions, which are enough to prove the seriousness of the problem. The "screen time" choice provided by the digital health function is also to give people new tool choices and limit the usage time of popular entertainment apps such as Netflix. The efficiency of the
algorithm is of course useful, but artificial regulation is also indispensable.
