Netflix · Product sense · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

How should Netflix personalize the home page?

Netflix is a subscription streaming service where people watch movies, series, and other video entertainment on connected devices. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Product sense
Personalization
Metrics
Experimentation
Trade-off analysis

The situation

A director of product for discovery at Netflix asks you to define the next step for recommendations on the member home page. The team already invests in predicting what each person may want to watch, but leaders are worried that strong title ranking alone may not be enough to help members quickly find something they want to start. Members see multiple rows, title images, and prompts at different moments in their Netflix journey, and each of those choices could affect whether a recommendation feels relevant or gets ignored. The team has several ways to personalize discovery, but limited engineering and experiment capacity, and every change can influence short term engagement, longer term satisfaction, and the range of content members consume. You need to recommend where Netflix should focus next in personalizing the home page experience, how success should be measured, and what trade-offs the team should accept.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product strategy memo.

Your answer must

Define the user problem on the Netflix home page and which member behaviors or moments you would prioritize.
Recommend a product approach for personalization that covers more than just which titles are ranked, and explain what you would prioritize first.
Propose a clear north star metric and 2 to 4 supporting metrics, including at least one that measures engagement on recommended titles after exposure.
Describe 2 to 3 experiments you would run to validate your approach and what decision each experiment would inform.
Identify the main trade-offs and risks, including at least one risk related to member trust, content diversity, or over-optimizing for short term behavior.

Constraints

Do not assume Netflix can solve this mainly by adding more content, changing pricing, or increasing marketing spend.
Keep the scope to the existing Netflix discovery experience, especially the home page and recommendation surfaces that appear there.
Success cannot be defined only by offline model quality or clicks, it must connect to actual member engagement after recommendations are shown.

Format

Use sections titled problem, recommendation, metrics, experiments, and risks.

How Netflix actually played it

Explains how Netflix personalizes recommendations and how the home page rows, visuals and timing are tailored to the viewer. Useful for PMs framing personalization as a product system.

Personalization covers presentation, not just ranking
Measure engagement on recommended titles

Built from How Netflix Content Recommendation System Works by HelloPM.