Netflix touted a more than 150% year over year increase in ad sales commitments as the streamer closed its 2024 Upfront negotiations with all major holding companies and independent agencies.
The commitments, which were in line with with the company’s expectations, included investments from categories including consumer packaged goods, tech & entertainment, auto, quick-service restaurants and retail. Specific figures were not disclosed Tuesday.
The company closed partnerships for a number of its upcoming films and series, such as “Squid Game,” “Wednesday,” “Outer Banks,” “Happy Gilmore 2,” “Ginny & Georgia” and “Love Is Blind,” as well as deals around live events such as WWE Raw and its Christmas Day NFL games.
During Season 3 of “Bridgerton,” Netflix secured international on-screen title sponsorships from L’Oreal, Pure Leaf, Amazon Audible, Puig, Booking.com, Stella Artois and Hilton. It also partnered with LVMH, COTY Gucci, Kaiku Caffee Latte, Aeromexico, L’Oreal, Google and Rakuten for the highly anticipated return of “Emily in Paris.”
“Our advertising clients remain excited about our highly engaged audience and the variety and quality of our programming,” the company said in a statement.
The close of negotiations for its second Upfront comes after Netflix’s ad tier saw its membership grow 34% quarter over quarter in its second quarter of 2024. In May, the ad tier reached 40 million monthly active users and now accounts for over 45% of Netflix’s sign-ups in the 12 countries where it is available.
Looking ahead, Netflix said it would bring its ad tech in house, which will begin testing in Canada in November with a global launch in 2025. And the service is also giving advertisers new ways to buy, new insights to leverage and new ways to measure impact.
Those include private 1:1 marketplace deals directly through The Trade Desk, Google’s Display & Video 360 or Xandr, which will be extended across different buy types, including a programmatic guarantee in November. It also introduced Google’s Campaign Manager and Innovid for impression verification and extended its relationship with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science for fraud and viewability verification into programmatic channels, which will be available across all buying channels in October.
Additionally, Netflix launched multiple programmatic campaigns with advertisers like Expedia, Ford, T-Mobile, Mercedes-Benz, Novartis and American Eagle over the last few weeks, with programmatic private marketplace buys currently available in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Mexico and set to expand more globally in the following months.
As for measurement partnerships, the ad-supported plan will be available this September in Barb’s Advance Campaign Hub (ACH), making it easier for U.K. advertisers to plan their campaigns. And later this fall, it will extend its campaign performance measurement suite into NielsenOne, Lucid (or Cint), EDO Inc., NCSolutions, Kantar and Affinity Solutions for all buy types.
“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 added.