A few months ago, Raghu Srinivasan launched a website named Feedflix that analyzes your customized Netflix RSS feeds to track how you’re using your membership. The site can tell you things like how much you spend per DVD rental or the typical number of days that you hold onto your DVDs before sending them back for new ones.
While having someone automatically calculate this data is helpful to me, when I first used the service it didn’t really tell me anything new about how I use Netflix. Since I enjoy number crunching, I had already been tracking this info and know I’m spending about $3 for every DVD rental.
What Feedflix did offer me, though, was a way to compare how I used the service in relation to other Netflix customers. When it first launched, I didn’t think that Feedflix would have enough members for a legitimate sample size, but with the service growing over the past few months, I wanted to check back and see what it could tell me about how others are using Netflix.
How Long Do Customers Keep Their Rentals?
Feedflix doesn’t answer this question directly because they break the data into separate groups, but if you do a little bit of math, it’s not too hard to estimate the average rental. What I found surprising about the results was that, even with 75% of the user base returning their DVDs within 10 days, the drag from the other 25% of users brings the average rental period to 9.55 days. In the past, Netflix has said that people who don’t rent as many movies have a tendency to churn at a higher rate, but this data would suggest that they contribute to the lionshare’s of Netflix’s profits before they drop off completely.