Design a new feature in Profiles that helps ad-supported users achieve better outcomes

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Netflix is a streaming entertainment company; its products include subscription video, original films and series, recommendations, profiles, games, and ad-supported plans.

Netflix Profiles help different members of a household maintain separate viewing histories, recommendations, maturity settings, and personal preferences. In the ad-supported plan, users may have additional friction: ad load can interrupt viewing momentum, discovery may need to feel more efficient, and different household members may have different tolerance for ads, content preferences, languages, and viewing contexts.

Design a new feature within Profiles that helps ad-supported users achieve better outcomes. You should define what “better outcomes” means from the user’s perspective and how that aligns with Netflix’s goals around retention, discovery, satisfaction, and monetization without degrading trust or entertainment quality.

Focus on the end-to-end product experience: how an ad-supported user encounters the feature, how it fits into profile setup or ongoing profile use, what choices or controls the user has, and how the experience works across shared households, devices, regions, and content types such as series, movies, live events, or games.

The experience should consider:

- The primary user segment within ad-supported Netflix households and the specific pain point you are solving for.

- Where the feature lives within Profiles and how it fits into existing viewing, discovery, and account workflows.

- How the feature handles personalization, household sharing, kids’ profiles, language/localization, and different viewing contexts.

- How ads affect the user journey and what boundaries should exist to protect entertainment quality and user trust.

- What user actions, signals, or preferences the product may need to capture.

- How success would be evaluated across engagement, retention, ad-supported plan satisfaction, and content discovery.

- Potential risks such as added complexity, privacy concerns, unfair personalization, or negative impact on advertisers and viewers.

Your goal is to frame a clear user problem, identify meaningful design opportunities inside Profiles, and propose a coherent product experience that improves outcomes for ad-supported Netflix users while fitting Netflix’s broader streaming and advertising ecosystem.