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Netflix 'Continue Watching' Engagement Drop

Root Cause Analysis · advanced

Netflix's 'Continue Watching' row engagement has suddenly dropped by 25% week-over-week. How would you investigate the root cause?

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Community approaches

Pavlo’s approach

Clarification questions:

  • Were there any changes/releases recently?
  • Were similar drop patterns observed before (can we tie them to some events, e.g. marketing campaign?)
  • Are there any other metric drops or engagement decrease at other places?

  1. Investigate what segments are affected the most? Are there any groups of users which contribute more to the drop (age, region, content preferances)? Check if there is any difference of the metric based on platforms (iOS/Android, tablet/phone).

  2. If there were recent releases of new features - check if they shade or somehow affect 'Continue Watching' row. Is user behaviour changed (e.g. they click somewhere else, go back, etc)?

  3. Check technical issues: crashes, loading time, reconnection, relogin, etc.

Gathered data can help to get clue of the root cause of the issue and let us go deeper into it.