Each title you see on Netflix is there for a reason. Netflix Netflix knows it has only seconds before it could lose you.

Researchers at the company have found that if a typical subscriber doesn't find something to watch in about 60 or 90 seconds, they could lose interest and move on to something else, like a video game, a book, or even old-fashioned TV.

"The user either finds something of interest [within the first 60 or 90 seconds] or the risk of the user abandoning our service increases substantially," Neil Hunt, Netflix's chief product officer, and Carlos Gomez-Uribe wrote recently in the journal ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems.

To that end, the company has spent more than a decade — and lots of money — honing its recommendation system, with the aim of giving you exactly what you want to watch when you want to watch it.

After all, the researchers also found that a typical subscriber will only look at about 10 to 20 titles on a couple of rows of recommendations. The typical subscriber doesn't scroll and scroll. Netflix In an effort to improve its recommendations, Netflix has spent the last year building a system that uses its global data — the service is available in almost every country in the world – to find what people with similar interests to a specific subscriber have watched and enjoyed, and then recommends a title based on that information.

Previously, Netflix only looked at data from within a specific subscriber's geographical region.

Netflix rolled out these changes few months ago, but only went public with it on Wednesday.

"If one member in this tiny island expresses an interest for anime, then we're able to map that person to the global anime community," Gomez-Uribe, who who led the 60-person team that developed the global algorithm, told Tech Insider in a recent interview. "We know which are the best movies and TV shows for people in the world in that community."

Getting recommendations right is crucial for Netflix. The company's business is built on keeping you interested and keeping you streaming. Because as soon as you can't find something to watch, you'll quit.

The company has around 100 people who focus on search and recommendations.

"Our personalization efforts, including the global recommendation system, are about helping members find something they will love to watch as soon as they open Netflix," Gomez-Uribe wrote to Tech Insider in an email. "Knowing that we have 60 to 90 seconds to help you find something great , it is our goal to develop the most personalized experience as possible, based on your unique preferences and tastes, so we can surface the titles you will enjoy as fast as possible."