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Comment by dazc | Hacker News Reader

“It’s important for us to own the customer,” Forssell told me last week. “If the viewer is in the app, we can tailor the home page to them. We can tailor what they show them next. We can respond to that in real time.”

Not sure I agree with this since I can not recall a single instance where I have wanted to watch anything that has been suggested to me. All platforms have a limited amount of good stuff that I will happily search for and a huge amount of junk that I am simply not interested in.

Managing individual subscriptions is a real pain and I would prefer to find everything I need on one platform thanks.

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I believe this behaviour is endemic to companies trying to morph into a "tech company" with MBAs leading the charge.

> Customer intimacy. Modern tech companies collect, store, organize, and analyze years of user data. This data is virtual gold, as it enables companies to run targeted ads and personalize the customer experience. The key difference between a customer walking into a Walmart supercenter and Amazon's online store is that Amazon instantaneously reorganizes the whole store (layout, displays, product offerings, etc.) in a way that's tailormade for that customer.

https://archive.is/wK1bC (why wework is not a tech company, hbr.org, 2019)

https://archive.is/G7rSR (why zomato.com is a tech company, hbr.org, 2021)

The irony there is I have never ever bought anything because Amazon recommended it.

Amazon is better than Walmart because you can search for and buy what you want when you want and have it show up the next day, and the prices are generally good enough.

Reviews are a nice touch, but those just need to be “good enough” to differentiate cheap chinese crap.

It’s not rocket science.

Bezos at one time mentioned that 35% of all Amazons sales came from recommendations. That’s not an insignificant number.

But, are those recommendations based on what you're looking at? I could definitely see users purchasing one of the recommended items if they come to the site with an item in mind, but not necessarily a brand.

I often come to Amazon and search for something like "washers" and skim through the "recommended" items until I find a pack that's a good value. But from an attribution standpoint, that sale is more the result of "browsing the aisle" than a recommendation. It's not like they recommended hairspray, which i bought in addition to the thing I came there to buy.

Agreed. I think highly contextualized recommendations are the most helpful.

As another example, I frequently find the "often purchased together" section to be very helpful. That might be the only recommendation system that I've ever used more than once.

I would say that's an example of recommendations working. However, in my personal experience, I rarely find "general" recommendations helpful.

I wonder what specifically Bezos meant? Similarly, I often search for something specific and see "sponsored" results that are what I was searching for, with the same item right below it as part of the organic search results. Or, I'll browse for items, then come back to purchase it later seeing it under "recently viewed." Do those count? If so, I purchase recommended things all the time. If not, I don't think I've ever bought something they organically offered on their main page with 20 years of purchase and browsing history.

Looking at the recommendations right now, they're not very good. Maybe I'm a hard sell? Sure, sidewalk chalk. You might run out of that and want more. Stuff to rekey your lock. I needed that when I bought my house a few years ago...I'm not sure why I would need that now. An air conditioner support bracket. I bought one last year much earlier in the summer.

The entire isle was constructed on the fly just for you, including all the items you "compared", and their prices, and the thing you eventually "picked".

Tech companies play this game as well. This has always been a core part of Netflix's pitch: our recommendations will keep users tied to the platform and also reduce the cost to acquire IP as we can always find something the user is interested in.

I used to believe their pitch. However, it doesn't seem like it ended up working. People hear about a show and want to watch that specific show. The recommendations only do so much.

Interesting. I would disagree. They've shifted from supremely niche recommendations ("British murder mysteries during wwII") to everyone watching the entirety tiger king within the same 2 wk period and a coarse grain search for british titles not even providing an exhaustive list.

If anything they have taken recommendations and remade them in their own image/strategy/goals rather than our personalized watching behavior. Great examples continue to be Bridgerton, the Office which then had a meme-based resurgence, that one with Kevin Spacey, etc.

I just think they don't really care.

They care about retention, but they've realized that content >> discoverability for that.

People will find out about content. What they will not do is watch bad content, no matter how specifically and accurately it speaks to them.

You're agreeing with me. When they were serving up niche recommendations it was an intentional business decision. If they could convince people to watch niche things, it reduces their IP costs as those things are cheaper to license and they're also in a stronger bargaining position as they don't need any one specific show.

What happened is consumers didn't agree. People wanted to watch the Office, not another feel-good comedy Netflix recommended. That forced Netflix to abandon their original strategy and spend a lot more on content.

Gold is knowing what the customer wants/needs because then you can actually sell them something. But I doubt any amount of "data" will be able to figure that out.

>> with MBAs leading the charge.

So at what point on the MBA path does a person get forced into removing the logic part of the their brain?

MBA's seems to make decisions that are using an alien form that non-MBA's can not seem to understand, and perceive as illogical.....

Because MBAs will always hold two items in tension: profit and user desire.

If these two items are out of whack, an MBA will always favor profit and that too in incredibly creative, often marketing-based ways that rethink the business model. They will convince the user of what they need the user to believe to make the largest possible profit.

ICs often think of profit and user needs/desire but they usually hunt for a place where it overlaps and if it doesn't, they'll hunt again. Profit is demanded for value/convenience to the customer but it is often a 1:1 relationship.

I believe this behaviour is endemic to companies trying to morph into a "tech company" with MBAs leading the charge.

They're also going to pocket Amazon's fee.

"Advertising doesn't work on me!"

If this is true, congrats. You are the .000001%. It works on people really well in the broad scope. It makes them gobs and gobs of money.

Does it though? When's the last time it worked on you?

I did buy something based off an instagram ad. I also would rather have ads that are meaningful than be shown some useless ads.

Your word in Zuckerberg's ear. I love seeing ads for things I actually want. I'd say they're less than 1% of all the ads I see though. For all the data these companies have on me, they don't seem to make great use of it.

It's brand recognition, not "I'm going to buy this product right now".

And the next time you need a product, you have a positive attachment to certain brands.

Not that i disagree, but it's funny to me that more people aren't paranoid of companies like i am. I expect _everyone_ to try and swindle me. No company loses anything, so every sale or v2 product i expect to be worse for me.

The only time i actually like ads and feel it "works on me" is when the product is a new area i have not previously seen before. Eg heated cups - i love my Ember. It sucks, but there's not much competition i'm aware of - so early ads were a dominated space. I eat those ads up if it's a product area i care about. (and i really love heated coffee lol)

It can be mutually beneficial too though. You get something, the company gets something.

Years ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a merino wool sneaker. It looked clean and minimalistic. I happened to enjoy wearing shoes without socks, so I clicked on the link and immediately bought a pair of Allbirds.

(Years later I read that Allbirds is part of the SV tech worker uniform.)

Also I definitely have clicked on those marketing email newsletters and made purchases based on those. In case I sound like a major consumer, I will mention that I managed to live in New Jersey for 8 years spending $1200 a month. That's rent, food, transportation, and impulse buys.

If you think of advertising as being "see ad -> buy thing", well, it may have worked on you if you needed that thing. That's not a crazy idea right? Advertising purely as a form of product discovery?

Then, beyond that, you can get into the stuff that uses observations about basic human psychology. It might be arrogance to consider yourself above human weakness. You are probably familiar with the strategy of brand awareness? All else being equal you are more likely to purchase a product that is familiar to you. If you see an advertisement for a product, even if you try to form a negative emotional attachment immediately, the emotional tenor will fade but the familiarity will remain.

I'm not going to say every form of advertising is effective, probably a lot of the web stuff that can be gamed is gamed and thus less effective, but I'd be cautious assuming it won't work on you (or anyone else for that matter).

There’s a big difference between online advertising and content recommendation engines. One can believe that the former works and that the latter does not; they’re not the same things.

Heck, there a huge variance in quality of recommendation engines. YouTube is clearly superior to say, Amazon Video.

Scores of corporations are perfecting the art of eking out just a few more views from a small segment of users while irritating the rest of the user base as much as possible without actually losing customers.

Most advertising/targeting doesn't work on most people most of the time, but we all have to endure it because it grabs just enough extra net revenue.

perhaps you are misconstruing the proportions here?

I suspect the vast majority of the users plonk down after work to look for a show. they are tired and they don't want to put a lot of effort into selecting the show or even paying attention to it. the suggestion will do. and the billion dollar provider staffed by high end experts has the analytics to back that up.

Meanwhile the noisy minority of users are seen complaining loudly about this or that feature not catering directly to them.

*I'm not trying to say you are that noisy minority btw, I only mean to evaluate the suggested premise of your comment.

This just makes it more obvious to me that I am not a normie. The idea of just turning on the tube and watching whatever is on would never occur to me. I’m either looking for things that match my admittedly non-mainstream tastes, or I’ll turn it off and read a book or play with one of my hobbies.

I believe advertising works on everyone; if it's really good, you just won't even be able to tell it's advertising or that it's 'working on you.'

Advertising comes in many flavours, and different flavours work for different people. E.g. I find that most tech-y people I know who say "advertising doesn't work on me" are very susceptible to the "laundry-list of features" type of advertising that tricks them into thinking they're being rational and objective about their decision process, while not questioning why they should care about any of those features.

For me, there's ads I actively enjoy watching. The old Cog[0] ad for the Honda Accord is one such case, as is the He-Man/Skeletor[1] ad for Money Supermarket (well, that and every other ad in that campaign). These work incredibly well on me as the brand awareness sort of marketing, and I'm sufficiently aware that I can correct for it — but I'm almost certainly unaware of my susceptibility to other sorts.

    0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PgTjhx1VLw

This is often assumed without actual data to back it. I remember seeing in HN (in the last few years) a link providing evidence that advertising didn't work in an instance where the company was sure it was working (for years). Sorry, my memory is not good enough to actually come up with the link, maybe someone else will remember...

>It’s important for us to own the customer

Outside of how evil this sounds, I've found that recommendation engines ultimately play against my own interests. It's possible that this ultimately my own fault based on what I watch. Realistically, I think there are multiple scenarios here:

- I watch some junk videos, and youtube suggests more videos like it.

- I enjoy junk videos by a single youtuber, and youtube expects that I want similar sorts of junk videos from many other youtubers. (when I do not)

- I enjoy junk videos of one narrow variety, but most people who enjoy those videos enjoy junk videos of a very wide variety. eg, I watch one retro games review channel, and so youtube thinks I want to watch whatever the most popular retro games review channel.

More perversely, I find that part of the feedback loop here is caused by the move from searching to browsing. That is, if I am shown a list of options (ie, if I am browsing) I tend to want to pick from the available options. The options are just based on what I've watched before, and so my tastes remain narrow over time. If I have to search for content, my mind wanders more, and I think more broadly about what content might be interesting to watch. This is nearly a creative process, and it broadens my horizons. Again, I think it would be perfectly fair to claim that this is really my fault, and not youtube's fault. But, it's very reminiscent of problems with junk food, or gambling, or any other vice. Just because the blame must lie with me does not mean that the company has created something good, which benefits people.

Having discovered this vice, I now do my best to avoid any product with a recommendation engine.

I think advertising works slightly differently than what you think and what Forssell seems to be saying.

You see once a show (or a movie) advertised. It does not really register consciously with you (assuming you are used to this kind of advertisement, and largely ignore it). You might even see it a few times, but if someone asked which advertisements you saw, you may not recall it at all.

Now, a friend comes along and recommends you that same show / movie. You quite likely remember it, not consciously, but, eh, subconsciously(?). Your friend's comment is actually much more than a recommendation, it becomes reinforcement that you've encountered this show before, and it is likely popular and hence good (even if you consciously think popular things are not your thing).

Next time you come to the site, you might not be looking for your friend's recommendation, just something else. However, it might just so happen that this particular show is being advertised to you. Even if you were to click on it, you don't think the site was advertising it to you. Your friend did! It just happened to be there. Conveniently, you didn't even have to search for it.

Now, that single platform thing. I would love that, too. Better yet, if they would also be forced to keep historical movies and shows from 1900-2000 in their catalogue, kind of a public service. However, they would also own the incredibly powerful advertisement channel called "Shows you might like." Or your friend might like, but anyways.

Honestly, the bigger problem to me is the HBO Max app is terrible. It constantly crashes and has all kinds of weird bugs. They're notorious for sending every customer an integration test email from a bogus domain.

If you're going to insist on being a software developer as well as a content producer, fine, but make good software. Otherwise, let the experts who are actually good at it provide the distribution platform and HBO sticks to what HBO is good at, which is producing content.

HBO may never have been as big as Netflix and Amazon, but as long as they had a multi-decade history of producing way better content and continued to do so, even if it was less content, they were going to remain relevant. They didn't need to eat the world. Being small but good is fine. But selling out to AT&T means they need to try and eat the world so whoever pushed the acquisition can justify it and get a bigger bonus.

Yeah and there are some many other choices at this point. I think a perfect startup would be a streaming manager. It creates unique passwords and handles the billing through virtual cards. You pick 6 streaming services and the system just rotates you through them, handling all the billing and cancelations. Binge watch the last year to catch-up and move on. FOMO is the other reason people have 5 services today and without the water cooler, you aren't even really not up to date.

HBO are the same giant brains who, when a viewer clicks a show to watch, don’t play it. Instead they put a giant “who are you” and make you pick the profile you will watch with — even when there is only one profile and it’s the same profile you use every single time you’ve ever attempted to watch their content.

This might be OK if the HBOmax app wasn't one of the worst apps out there for video streaming. On my top-of-the-line Roku it is horrible sluggish. Comically so.

> Not sure I agree with this since I can not recall a single instance where I have wanted to watch anything that has been suggested to me.

Does this tell you that:

• HBO is wrong

• You're not representative of either their user base or the user base they want

• You don't remember the times your browsing behavior was influenced by suggestions because you like believing you're not influenced by suggestions

Here's a fun test: try to think of what you watched that was not suggested to you one way or another. Think of what it would even mean.

The vast majority of the shows I watch I have found by searching for keywords I'm interested in, or actors who I enjoy watching, so I can come up with a pretty long list of shows I watched that were never suggested to me in one way or another.

You type a keyword... somewhere? On Google maybe? And then what? Pick the first movie listed? What about actors? Do you watch all of their movies? In random order? Do you do it chronologically? Why?

The only way you could watch movies without it being the result of a suggestion would be if you had a random list of movies (preferably of all movies ever made) and picked at random in it. I think it's safe to assume you're not doing that, so you're being suggested movies.

On the other hand, I can honestly not think of a single show or movie that hasn't been suggested to me in one way or another. I may search for a specific show or movie, but that is either something I have already watched, or I saw an ad for somewhere along the line.

we need to define what "suggseted to you" means. if you are browsing a list called "Films we think you might like", that's obviously a suggestion. however, if you're browsing a list of "Action & Adventure", you need to know how the titles in that list were added. is it recent titles in that genre, is it titles that are currently trending, or is it titles that have the same actor/director/plots as other titles you have been watching?

the only way to really know that it wasn't some sort of algorithmic detection is if you 100% absolutely positively never browse and only watch a movie directly from the search feature.

Right. As soon as some form of curation occurs you're being suggested something. What the parent might be trying to say if I steel man it is that he's still making a choice between the options that he's being suggested. Which, yes he is, but you're still making a choice between suggested options. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Suggested by a friend or by a reviewer who suggestions I have enjoyed in the past seems far removed from the ML suggestions from Amazon, Netflix, or YouTube.

HBO's goals and a user's goals are fundamentally not aligned.

They're tailoring their home page to increase the metrics they track and to make more money. They're not doing it altruistically to make me happier or to solve a problem I have.

HBO's goal is to make HBO more profitable. The user base they want, one which shares that goal, is nonexistent, there are only users who have a goal of being entertained and have varying levels of tolerance for HBO's antics to achieve that goal.

How are they fundamentally not aligned? To me it seems like they are fairly well aligned. Not perfectly, but close. What are they doing that doesn't help a user with their goal of being entertained?

The user's goal is to be entertained. The way they make money is by getting you to continue your subscription. You will only continue that subscription is if you are entertained. So their goal is to entertain you enough to keep the subscription.

Sure they will produce new content and advertise it to you ahead of time such that you might keep the subscription for another month. But it only works if that content is interesting to you, so they still need to make content that is interesting.

I guess the content they are producing is aligned at groups of users, and not any one individual user. So if you are far from the targeted groups, then the goals are not as well aligned. But their goal is still to suggest the content in their library that you will be interested in to continue to stay subscribed.

See my example above. I subscribe to HBO Max. I click to watch something. HBO Max won’t show it to me. It shows me a profile picker to pick among all one profiles I have, the same one profile I’ve always had, and always will have.

Why? To capture new profiles from people who break into subscribers’ homes to surreptitiously watch HBO Max? How often does that happen relative to me wanting to watch, like always, as myself, like always?

I'm not saying HBO is wrong, but I do believe most marketing departments find their managers easier to manipulate than their customers.

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