LOS GATOS, Calif.—On the first anniversary of the launch of its ad-supported tier, Netflix has announced that the service has amassed 15 million global monthly active users, triple the figure the streamer reported in May.
Netflix launched the ad-supported offering in November of 2022 following poor subscriber growth that hammered the value of its stock.
Since then the availability of a less expensive ad-supported tier, a crackdown on password sharing and price hikes, have improved its finances and sub counts. In its Q3 earnings, Netflix added 8.76 million subs for a total of 247.15 million subs worldwide.
It even managed to increase subscribers in the more mature and highly competitive U.S. and Canadian region, adding 1.75 million subs for a total of 77.32 million subs at the end of Q3 2023, a vast improvement over the 0.1 million subs it added a year earlier in Q3 2022.
“One year ago we launched Netflix’s ad-supported plan,” said Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix in a blog post. “We have built an incredible foundation, focusing on areas advertisers told us matter most, all while delivering unmissable entertainment at an unbeatable value. As we continue to build and adapt our service, we’re excited about the progress we’ve made and that we now reach 15 million global monthly active users.”
Reinhard also noted that in the last 12 month, they:
- Elevated our measurement capabilities and rolled out third-party verification with partners like Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify globally; Netflix also enabled advertising impact with EDO Inc.; and launched Nielsen ONE measurement in the US.
- Are offering additional ad products and features. After starting with :15 and :30 second ads, we can now run :10, :20, and :60 second ads globally and expanded their category availability to include dating, enhanced financial services and pharma, and enabled additional targeting like mobile devices, more genres, time of day, and continued audience demos. And with the launch of Top 10, advertisers globally can target the most popular series and movies on Netflix.
- Enhanced the member experience: they've upgraded the feature set of their ads plan to include 1080p versus 720p video quality, two concurrent streams, and downloads to become available by the end of this week. All members of the ad-supported plan will be able to download their favorite series and movies, making Netflix the only ad-supported streamer to offer downloads.
Looking forward, she highlighted a number of other initiatives:
- Starting in Q1 2024, advertisers globally will be able to utilize their new binge ad (wt) format that taps into the viewing behavior of watching multiple episodes in a row. After watching three consecutive episodes, members will be presented with a fourth episode ad-free. In early 2024, Netflix will also launch the ability to showcase QR codes in advertising creative running on Netflix in the US.
- Sponsorships are now available in the US and will expand globally in 2024, with title, moment, and live sponsorships:
- Netflix kicked off Title Sponsorships with Frito Lay’s Smartfood® with the recent season of the Emmy-nominated series Love is Blind and coming up, it will partner with additional sponsors for the exciting new reality series Squid Game: The Challenge, and the highly anticipated final season of The Crown.
- Moment Sponsorships will feature cultural moments for advertisers to tap into like local holidays. They will become available at the end of this year in the US and will roll out globally in 2024.
- On November 14, T-Mobile, Nespresso, and others will be the presenting Live Sponsors for Netflix’s newest live sports event, The Netflix Cup.
- Netflix is also working to bring more measurement capabilities to our advertisers globally, as the streamer looks to partner internationally with third-party providers to enable campaign verification in 2024.
