Netflix uses data science to save more than $1 billion per year in customer retention.

And that’s just one of many ways they leverage big data to drive growth.

Here are 5 more:

1. Personalized recommendations

Created by an ensemble of at least 5 models, your home page is unique to your preferences.

Netflix estimates their recommender system drives 80% of streaming decisions.

2. Thumbnail generation and testing

Netflix's cutting edge software process thousands of still images per movie title.

Real-time A/B testing determines which image is driving the highest click-through rates.

3. Movie production location scouting

Movie production is a complex cost optimization problem.

Advanced data science chooses an optimal location by considering scheduling constraints, budget, and scene requirements.

4. Movie editing

Post-production can take hundreds of hours.

Machine learning uses past history to predict when manual intervention is necessary.

5. Streaming quality control

High quality content is worthless without high quality streaming.

Models run day and night to test and re-allocate bandwidth usage.