Netflix's Ad Tier Hits 15 Million Monthly Active Users Ahead of 1-Year Anniversary

Netflix's ad tier is celebrating its birthday by rolling out some new numbers. In a blog post today marking one year of Netflix's ad-supported tier, Amy Reinhard, the company's new president of advertising, announced that the plan now reaches 15 million global monthly active users. That's a gain of five million since Netflix last revealed its ad-tier's active users when closing its upfront in August. "Our goal isn’t just to offer the same products and tools the industry has come to expect—although we’ve made a lot of progress on that front over the last year," Reinhard wrote. "It’s to build something bigger and better than what exists today." Netflix Adds Almost 9 Million Subscribers While Increasing Prices … Again In the blog, the streamer's ad president also highlighted some of the service's accomplishments over its first year, including increasing ad formats to include 10-second, 20-second and 60-second ads; expanding its advertiser categories to include dating, enhanced financial services and pharma; and enabling more targeting capabilities. Additionally, the streamer's recently announced Binge ads, which let viewers who are binging on a show watch an episode ad free after a marketing message, will roll out globally in 2024. QR codes are also debuting in the ad creative on the streamer early next year. Netflix's sponsorship offerings are also off to a good start, according to Reinhard, with Frito Lay’s Smartfood kicking things off by being the Title Sponsor of Love is Blind. Additional sponsors are also on the way for Squid Game: The Challenge and the final season of The Crown. Moment Sponsorships, which feature cultural moments for advertisers to join in on, are also on the way at the end of this year in the U.S., rolling out globally in 2024. And on Nov. 14, T-Mobile, Nespresso and other advertisers will be the presenting Live Sponsors for Netflix’s live sports event, The Netflix Cup. After adding more measurement and third-party verification capabilities with partners such as Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, Nielsen One measurement in the U.S. and with EDO onboard to measure advertising impact, the company will bring its capabilities globally and "look to partner internationally with third-party providers to enable campaign verification in 2024," according to Reinhard. The viewers aren't being left behind either, with downloads coming this week to ad-tier subscribers. A C-suite of change But forget about a year of change. The last few weeks alone have been a whirlwind at the streamer's ad-supported tier, with Reinhard only recently taking the advertising leadership position following Jeremi Gorman's exit in early October, which buyers recently told Adweek had taken themselves and Netflix's own employees by surprise. Moving forward, buyers said they're looking for Netflix's ad tier to scale faster, considering the company's global footprint is 247 million paid subscribers. And it seems Netflix execs believe Reinhard is the one to help the company get there. In the streamer's recent third-quarter earnings video, Greg Peters, Netflix’s co-CEO, acknowledged Gorman's contributions to building Netflix's ads business over its first year but also gave full support to Reinhard, with the new advertising president having experience with Netflix's global studio, financial strategy and business development. “You think about that assemblage of skills, and you think about the existing ads leadership team that we have that has got a rich history in ads in general and connected TV—especially someone like [Peter Naylor, vp of worldwide ad sales], who started selling connected TV at Hulu—that’s a strong team to take our ads business to the next level,” Peters said.