Streaming is borrowing from social, but it isn’t becoming social
Netflix’s move towards vertical video and swipe based discovery reflects a broader change in how audiences find entertainment. Streaming platforms are increasingly adopting behaviours made familiar by TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts: fast browsing, personalised recommendations and mobile first interfaces. However, this does not necessarily mean Netflix wants to become another social platform. The distinction is important: short-form video can act as a discovery layer, helping audiences quickly find something they want to watch, while Netflix’s core product remains premium, long form entertainment. This reflects a wider convergence across the attention economy, where platforms are borrowing each other’s strongest features without abandoning their core proposition.
For advertisers, this makes the boundary between social, video and streaming increasingly blurred. Consumer behaviour is no longer neatly divided between “watching TV” and “scrolling social”; discovery can happen in one environment and deeper viewing in another. Netflix’s growing advertising business adds another dimension to this shift, with the company developing more sophisticated relationships and longer-term agreements with advertisers. The implication is that media planning will increasingly need to consider the role each video environment plays across the consumer journey rather than treating social video, online video and CTV as completely separate channels.
What this means for us:
The opportunity is to move towards more video first, rather than starting with separate TV, social and streaming budgets, planners can increasingly start with the audience and the role of video. A short vertical execution and a premium CTV placement may be part of the same communications system, even though they perform very different jobs.
Agencies should test how streaming complements linear TV and social among Irish audiences, while developing creative systems that can move between short form vertical, online video and premium long form environments. The competitive set for attention is expanding Netflix is not simply competing with other streamers, just as TikTok is no longer competing only with social platforms. For agencies, that means the traditional channel plan increasingly needs to evolve into an attention and audience plan.
Read more: https://www.thedrum.com/news/streaming-is-changing-that-doesn-t-mean-netflix-wants-to-be-tiktok