Netflix advertising revenue soars 150%, secures top brands

Netflix has solidified its burgeoning advertising business, reporting a 150% increase in upfront ad sales commitments compared to 2023. (Upfront is like a big sales pitch. Every year, media companies like Netflix hold upfront, selling a large portion (about 70-80%) of their advertising space to big brands ahead of their new shows and programmes.)

"For Netflix’s second year of Upfront negotiations, we closed deals with all major holding companies as well as independent agencies, with a 150% plus increase in upfront ad sales commitments over 2023, in-line with our expectations. Upfront commitments include investments from all key categories like CPG, tech & entertainment, auto, QSR, and retail," stated Amy Reinhard, President, Advertising.

Netflix closed partnerships for a number of its upcoming films and series including fan-favorites Squid Game, Wednesday, Outer Banks, Happy Gilmore 2, Ginny & Georgia, and Love is Blind as well as deals around highly anticipated live events including WWE Raw, and the Christmas Day NFL games.

"Our advertising clients remain excited about our highly engaged audience and the variety and quality of our programming. For Season 3 of Bridgerton — our sixth most popular English-language TV series of all time — we secured multiple international on-screen title sponsors including Pure Leaf, Amazon Audible, Puig, Booking.com, Stella Artois, and Hilton," said Amy.

Just last week Netflix partnered with LVMH, COTY Gucci, Kaiku Caffee Latte, Aeromexico, Google, and Rakuten for the highly anticipated return of Emily in Paris.

As announced in May, Netflix is giving advertisers new ways to buy, new insights to leverage, and new ways to measure impact. The streaming giant is looking forward to the launch of its in-house ad tech platform, which will be tested in Canada in November and launched globally in 2025.
Expanded Buying Capabilities:

Marketers can now set up private 1:1 marketplace deals directly with Netflix through The Trade Desk, Google’s Display & Video 360, or Xandr. Netflix is working to extend the capabilities across different buy types including programmatic guarantee in November.

Netflix has introduced Google’s Campaign Manager 360 and Innovid for impression verification and extended its existing DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science relationship for fraud and viewability verification into programmatic channels. These solutions will then be available across all buying channels in October.

Over the last few weeks, Netflix has been executing multiple programmatic campaigns with advertisers such as Expedia, Ford, T-Mobile, Mercedes-Benz, Novartis, and American Eagle.

The programmatic private marketplace buys are currently available in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico and will be extended more globally in the following months.

New Measurement Partnerships:

This September, Netflix’s ad-supported plan will be available in Barb's Advance Campaign Hub (ACH), making it easier for UK advertisers to plan their campaigns.

Later this fall, Netflix will extend its campaign performance measurement suite into NielsenOne, Lucid (or Cint), EDO Inc., NCSolutions, Kantar, and Affinity Solutions for all buy types.

Netflix has also partnered with clean room suppliers Snowflake, InfoSum, and LiveRamp to create a secure and privacy-safe environment for its members and advertisers.

The Clean Rooms will allow advertisers to determine audience overlap, post-campaign reach and frequency, and last-touch attribution in a secure environment.

Snowflake Data Clean Rooms is available for partners now, and InfoSum and LiveRamp will launch in the coming months.

"Over the last few months, we’ve hit great milestones for our ads business including closing another successful Upfront market, building and implementing an expanded programmatic suite, enhancing our global measurement capabilities, and securing impactful global ad campaigns. We’ll continue to improve the Netflix ads plan to ensure our members are delighted by the experience while simultaneously creating solutions that deliver results for our marketers, putting brands at the center of the best shows and films in the world, to a highly valuable and engaged audience," said Amy.