Netflix has always used data to decide which shows to license, and now that expertise is extended to the first-run. And there was not one trailer for “House of Cards,” there were many. Fans of Mr. Spacey saw trailers featuring him, women watching “Thelma and Louise” saw trailers featuring the show’s female characters and serious film buffs saw trailers that reflected Mr. Fincher’s touch.

It is impossible to say that “House of Cards” is a hit because Netflix, to the consternation of some of its more traditional competitors, is not participating in ratings. But social media is thick with mentions of both the new programming and the new paradigm. The show made the front page of The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, and was on the cover of Emmy magazine, a good omen for its awards future. And when your price is as low as Netflix’s — $7.99 a month for streaming — a flurry of buzz can pull plenty of people off the fence.

While careers and entire networks have been made and lost based on the mysterious alchemy of finding a hit, Netflix seems to be making it look easy, or at least making it a product of logic and algorithms as opposed to tradition and instinct.

A cable executive who has talked to Amazon says that its Prime service, a nascent effort to get into original content, will also lean hard on data-driven approaches to determine its programming. The executive, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private, said it would change the way that business operates sooner than people thought.

“I think it is a little hysterical to say that Big Data will win the day now and forever, but it is clear that having a very molecular understanding of user data is going to have a big impact on how things happen in television,” he said.

Others aren’t so sure. John Landgraf, who, as president and general manager of FX Networks, has had a good run at the channel in finding hits, said he thought numbers-crunching would never have predicted the success of “The Sopranos,” “South Park,” and “Mad Men,” among others, including hits he has said yes to, like “Sons of Anarchy.”

“Data can only tell you what people have liked before, not what they don’t know they are going to like in the future,” he said. “A good high-end programmer’s job is to find the white spaces in our collective psyche that aren’t filled by an existing television show,” adding, those choices were made “in a black box that data can never penetrate.”