First, Netflix creates multiple versions of a movie cover by picking out different scenes in the movie, as they did with Stranger Things, for example:
Next, Netflix determines which cover to use, based on your preferences (genre, themes, favorite actors). Here’s an example of how Netflix would show the movie Good Will Hunting to different users. As you’ll see, Netflix shows artwork with Matt Damon and Minnie Driver if you’re someone who watches lots of romantic movies, but they feature comedian Robin Williams if you’re more drawn to comedies:
Hope it helped!
If you want to know more about the precise algorithms and systems Netflix uses to come up with the right artwork — contextual bandits, A/B tests, etc — , here’s a Medium story from some of their engineers that explains how they do it:
