Netflix's Third Season of Ads and a Look Ahead at What's Next

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Netflix's Third Season of Ads and a Look Ahead at Whats Next

Amy Reinhard

President, Advertising

Business

05 November 2025

United States

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As we wrap the third season of our ads business (and enter the fourth!), we're becoming series regulars in the marketplace, driving innovation, scale and performance for our clients around the globe.

Netflix now has thousands of advertising clients around the world. We've built and implemented the Netflix Ads Suite, our in-house first-party ad tech platform, in all 12 ad-supported countries. We've expanded our programmatic offering to include Amazon, AJA, Google Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk, and Yahoo DSP. We've partnered with over 50 global ad measurement vendors and have reached critical scale in all markets.

Now that we have the building blocks of our business in place, we decided it's the best time to reassess how we measure our ads reach.

Just as there is no universal streaming viewing metric, there is also no industry standard for measuring the overall reach of ads in streaming. Four years ago, we were the first streamer to regularly release viewing information for our shows and films, and explain how we measure our viewing engagement by establishing a metric that mirrors the way third parties measure popularity and can be consistently measured across different companies.

After speaking to our partners, we know that what they want most is an accurate, clear, and transparent representation of who their ads are reaching. Our previous measurement (which was based on account profiles) didn't represent all of the engaged people who are in the room watching.

So today we are instituting a more complete metric, one that can easily be adopted by others and truly reflects the scale of our ads business - Monthly Active Viewers (MAV). We define MAV as members who have watched at least 1 minute of ads on Netflix per month, and multiply that by the estimated average number of people within a household, which we get from Netflix first-party research.

Today, ads on Netflix reach more than 190M Monthly Active Viewers (MAVs) globally.

Our move to viewers means we can give a more comprehensive count of how many people are actually on the couch, enjoying our can't-miss series, films, games and live events with friends and family.

Formats at the Forefront:

In May, we announced that we were exploring new modular ad formats that would deliver more relevant and engaging advertisements to our members. This month, we're testing that modularity with interactive video ads in the US and Canada. These ads will cater to our members viewing behaviors and allow advertisers to benefit from dynamic templates that use mix-and-match creative elements to drive business outcomes. We're encouraged by early results and will roll these out globally by Q2 2026.

The Data Digest:

With nearly six months of the Netflix Ads Suite under our belt in most countries, we've been enhancing our targeting capabilities and tools in four big ways to make it even easier to buy on Netflix.

First, this month we're expanding our advanced demographic targeting to reach relevant audiences with precision. Advertisers can now find options like education, marital status, and household income.

Second, we expanded our partnership with LiveRamp globally, so clients can easily activate first-party data capabilities. Clients can now onboard audiences via LiveRamp in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the UK.

Third, the Netflix Ads Suite can now offer in-market audiences so that advertisers can reach members who might be in the market for a specific product. This helps our clients tailor their targeting to reach high-propensity viewers, with options like luxury vehicles, travel packages, and dining experiences now available.

Finally, the Netflix Ads Suite is testing a planning API to help agency partners understand how to easily find the right audiences for their clients. The API will seamlessly work with in-house planning tools and use real-time forecasting to provide insights for marketers to plan across key demographics and geographies.

These capabilities are currently available in the US and will be globally available in 2026.

More Ways to Prove Success:

We know that measurement takes a leading role in media planning, so we recently expanded existing offerings and built new partnerships to prove outcomes:

In France, we partnered with M diam trie to launch a bi-annual measurement of our ads plan viewers via a new standardized cross-video audience measurement solution, Watch.'

In Japan, we've expanded our partnership with Macromill, enabling clients to leverage their log-based BLS (Brand Lift Solution) solution early next year.

In Mexico and Brazil, we partnered with Amplified Intelligence and Alter Agents (BR only) to prove Netflix's ad attention outcomes.

In the US, we expanded our Brand Lift capability with Kantar through tagless direct integration and iSpot to measure reach, frequency, and attribution.

We completed a direct integration with AudienceProject across EMEA to provide granular reporting to our clients in the region.

LIVEly Dynamic Ad Insertion:

As we continue to stream must-watch live events, we're making it even easier for advertisers to make live more local. We began testing dynamic ad insertion (DAI) with WWE Raw and SmackDown this quarter and are excited to now offer DAI across the US, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Mexico, and the UK, for the upcoming NFL Christmas Gameday.

In 2026, we will scale our DAI offering across more live titles. These advancements enable us to deliver a personalized ad experience during our live titles and help brands target more relevant audiences.

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