Netflix has said it has achieved a 150% plus increase in upfront ad sales commitments over 2023, in line with its expectations.
Netflix made the announcement off the back of its second year of Upfront negotiations, where broadcasters and streamers pitch their upcoming schedules to the advertising community.
Netflix closed partnerships for a number of its upcoming films and series including Squid Game, Wednesday, Outer Banks, Happy Gilmore 2, Ginny & Georgia, and Love is Blind as well as deals around live events including WWE Raw.
For Season 3 of Bridgerton – Netflix’s sixth most popular English-language TV series of all time – it secured multiple international on-screen title sponsors including Pure Leaf, Amazon Audible, Puig, Booking.com, Stella Artois, and Hilton.
Bridgerton Season 3
The announcement comes as the streamer announced in May it would be launching its own in-house ad tech platform, which will be tested in Canada in November and launched globally in 2025.
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 says it is also working to extend the capabilities across different buy types including a programmatic guarantee in November.
Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix said: “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.”
Netflix reported a strong 2024 Q2 with 17% revenue growth and an operating margin of 27% vs 22% last year.
The streaming business now expects full-year 2024 reported revenue growth of 14% to 15% (up from 13% to 15%).
Netflix global membership surged over 16% YOY from 238m to 277m. If that sort of increase is maintained, Netflix will be looking at 300m plus subscribers sometime in 2025. As co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on the earnings call, if subscriber growth continues it will increase the US$17b annual content spend proportionally.
Numbers of subscribers are not released for individual countries. Australia is part of the APAC region for Netflix. The growth there was significant – 40m to 50m in the past 12 months. The growth in the Indian market would account for much of that.
The best guidance we have to the number of customers in Australia comes from Telsyte about 11 months ago when the Netflix subscribers base was reported to be just over 6m.
See also: Netflix Q2 2024 results: Ad tier drives subscriber growth + partnerships yes, bundling no