These DVDs are Making Me Thirsty

March 16, 2023

Where were you when Netflix launched their DVD service? Me personally, I was in college, a mere 2 months from my 21^st birthday.

April 1998.

Wait… what? 1998? The year Seinfeld ended?

Yes, I couldn’t believe it either. The times were so simple then. We still recorded our favorite TV shows on what was called a “V C R” because there was no DVR, no streaming.

I bring up Seinfeld because the show is now one of the more popular (and expensive) shows on Netflix, and that might be because we (me, you, your parents, the uncle of your best friend) are all watching it.

And chances are we are watching on the same login. But that is quickly coming to an end.

Netflix has gone through a bit of a mid-life crisis over the past 3 years. Pandemic hit, lots of people signing up. Pandemic ended, less people signing up.

They’ve added ad tiers and returned ad dollars.

Now comes the most mid-life crisis-y crisis of them all, password sharing crackdown.

Now, I get it. We live in a world where there is a lot of content. A lot. And there are a lot of services that we need to sign up for in order to consume said content. A lot.

But Netflix was the cool one that let us all share our password with me, your parents, the uncle of your best friend.

The fear is that if Netflix does start to crackdown on password sharing (and they will) they will lose more subscribers than they gain (which they will). The ease of sharing a password will always trump having to pay for something yourself.

I’ve increased my monthly Netflix subscription to allow those that share my password to continue to do so, and do it without watching ads (who really watches ads anymore? What was that? We’re in advertising and we need people to watch ads? Oh…rats).

What does this all mean? This means less folks are going to be around to watch the content that Netflix is putting out there. Guaranteed audiences will decrease, CPMs might increase, advertisers might put the money elsewhere, and Netflix will have to figure something else out.

But just as Jerry said to Elaine, “Oh, I gotta get on that internet, I’m late on everything!” let’s hope that Netflix isn’t late on trying to make everyone happy.

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Eddie Wilders

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Eddie likes to say that he planted roots in Westchester County because he lost his Brooklyn accent, which honed his ability to explain data and analytics to clients. With his love of numbers and building audiences, the digital world has become like a second home for Eddie over the last 10+ years after his experience in traditional broadcast. As a digital consultant, he works mostly on digital and programmatic media channels. He hopes to steer his kids into a career path other than advertising so they have other industries to talk about during the holidays.