Challenges in Search on Streaming Services: Netflix Case Study
This work addresses practical search and recommendation problems for streaming service providers and their global user base, but it is incremental as it builds on existing industry practices without introducing new methods.
The paper examines the challenges of implementing search functionality for streaming services like Netflix, focusing on integrating recommendations for content discovery and handling searches for unavailable content while addressing technical difficulties in providing instant search across diverse devices and languages globally.
We discuss salient challenges of building a search experience for a streaming media service such as Netflix. We provide an overview of the role of recommendations within the search context to aid content discovery and support searches for unavailable (out-of-catalog) entities. We also stress the importance of keystroke-level instant search experience, and the technical challenges associated with implementing it across different devices and languages for a global audience.