While Netflix has now, officially, swapped to an ad-hoc reporting model rather than regular updates on its subscriber numbers, we have had a promising recent update. Alongside the announcement that it plans to unveil a new, GenAI-based ad product amid its refreshed ad tech suite, they announced another milestone for their ad-supported tier. Brandon Blake, our entertainment attorney in the known from Blake & Wang P.A. shares the latest insight.
Now “More Than” 94 Million Users Ad-Supported
Netflix’ Chief of Ads, Amy Reinhard, announced at their Upfront presentation, that their advertising tier alone now accounts for 94M monthly users. She also revealed that they have a significant portion of the 18-34-year-old demographic, and that users are spending 41 hours on average on their app platform. Intriguingly, she also claims that their so-called “mid-roll” ads are retaining viewer attention similarly to movies and shows, although it’s unclear how they’re judging that specific statistic.
New Tech Suite Goes Live
This announcement, naturally, was more to showcase their advancements to their in-house ad suite, more than to actually focus on subscriber numbers, so that’s all we got. This new suite of tools for advertisers includes GenAI features to adjust ad copy “on the fly”. So think to suit the audience or specific watcher. They also announced programmatic buying options and an expanded measurement console. The days where Netflix and ads were antagonists are clearly long gone.
However, despite the advertising babble around it, Netflix has a strong core point. Where many advertisers offer great shows or great advertising tools, they have consistently managed to offer both. Does this indeed mean that “a dollar spent on Netflix is more valuable than a dollar spent anywhere else,” as they claimed? For now, it seems so. It will be quite interesting to see how Disney’s expanding focus on new advertiser tools impacts them going forward, however.
