Netflix’s desire to quickly ramp up an ad-supported tier — and the streamer’s reported interest in acquiring the video streaming platform Roku — may be driven by a very specific and very lucrative motivation: political advertising.
“There’s a $9 billion pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if Netflix can get live with ads by September,” Dallas Lawrence, senior vice president of Samba TV, told TheWrap.
The projected $8.8 billion spend on ads for the 2022 midterms represents a massive leap from the $3.9 billion spent for the 2018 midterms and comes close to the $9.5 billion laid out during the 2020 presidential election.