Netflix said it plans to launch its own advertising technology platform to allow advertisers to buy ads on the streaming service. In addition, Netflix announced that its ad inventory will be available to buy across a number of ad tech platforms including Google’s Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk and Magnite. These companies join Microsoft’s Xandr, which helped launch Netflix’s ad-supported tier in late 2022 as its exclusive ad tech partner for buying and serving ads.
The ad tech announcement follows news from Wednesday morning that Netflix had secured the rights to exclusively stream two Christmas Day NFL games globally later this year. Both pieces of news were timed to Netflix’s presentation during the TV industry’s “upfronts” week in New York, when big media companies such as Disney and Comcast’s NBCUniversal hold glitzy events to pitch upcoming programming to advertisers. This was the first time Netflix held an in-person upfronts event.
Netflix also said that its ad-supported subscription tier now reaches 40 million monthly active users globally, up from 5 million a year ago. Netflix has not disclosed how many subscriptions it has for the ad-supported tier (one subscription could include multiple active users in the same household).