Netflix ad tier launches

It’s happened: the streaming giant has brought out an ad-supported tier across 12 countries, now with a lower price and a couple of missing titles (licensing restrictions), and four to five minutes of ad an hour – here are the details.

Why it matters

A major story over the last couple of months, Netflix’s volte-face from ad business denier to ad business advocate has been swift, decisive, and well-placed to arrest the subscription fatigue that will so interest analysts when the company announces its quarterly results this week.

Has it reinvented advertising for a new era? No, it’s reprised the tried and tested TV ad format that we all know and recognise. But it will do so against signed-in, paying subscribers, at scale and with the enhancement of its audience-matching capabilities.

It would not be surprising to see advertising quickly become a significant revenue stream for the company very soon.

What’s happening

Netflix announced its low prices and some details about how advertising would look:

• Ads will be between 15 and 30 seconds long.
• There will be pre- and mid-roll slots
• Targeting will be broad: country and genre
• Guardrails will allow some advertisers to avoid appearing next to sexual or violent content.
• Ad viewability partners Double Verify and Integral Ad Science will be on hand to verify from 2023.

More broadly, Netflix has been working to bring measurement capabilities, whether through Nielsen in the US, or to the UK TV ratings agency BARB – both hint at a necessarily more open attitude to streaming numbers than has been traditional for the often cagey company.

What does it mean?

Streaming figures, whether for the platform or for individual shows, have tended to be Netflix’s secret to keep – but now it needs to be open with advertisers paying top dollar for its audience.

But there is a refreshing idea here: Netflix, despite building a platform that tailors to the individual, is betting on the fundamental value of its advertising as a high-reach channel for building fame across swaths of the global population.

Sourced from Netflix, WARC, TechCrunch