Netflix has spent years trying to become more than a place to watch movies and TV shows. After experimenting with everything from interactive games to live sports, it’s now borrowing a page from YouTube’s playbook to give you another reason to stay.
Vogue, Variety, and BuzzFeed head to Netflix
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming giant has now signed licensing deals with several major publishers to bring their video content onto its homepage starting August 3. The list includes Penske Media brands like The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Billboard and Rolling Stone, along with Condé Nast properties such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan and Elle from Hearst Magazines, plus BuzzFeed, People Inc and Tastemade.
The videos from these publishers will run anywhere between three and twenty minutes, and viewers in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand will get access first. Some of the content will be archival footage pulled from their existing libraries, while other series will continue producing new episodes for Netflix specifically. Titles include Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector, Architectural Digest’s Walking Tour, and People’s My Life in Pictures.
A homepage built to keep you scrolling
Netflix executive John Derderian said the goal is to help members “keep exploring the stories and personalities they love” once a show or movie ends. That reasoning tracks with other changes already underway at Netflix, including the vertical video feed it’s rolling out to make the homepage feel more like a scrollable social app than a traditional streaming menu.
With this move, Netflix is giving publishers a new distribution channel with a massive built-in audience. In turn, it’s getting an easy supply of fresh content it doesn’t have to produce or license. Netflix has said this is the “first wave” of this new feature, and it plans to add more publishers to the list going forward.