And the industry responded, with the company’s stock price immediately receiving a boost following the virtual presentation, which Naylor called a “happy ripple effect.”

“We’re purposeful and deliberate with the numbers and the insight we release to the market, both to Wall Street and Madison Avenue. We want to make sure that everything is stable and reliable as we think they need to be,” Naylor said.

The Netflix ad effect

Even with the company’s successes amid a soft market, it’s still early days for Netflix’s ad tier, which launched in November 2022.

During its upfront presentation, Jeremi Gorman, president, worldwide advertising, put things into perspective.

“We are building a forever business,” Gorman said, adding that in the first six months the company “worked hard to be brilliant at the basics, focusing on areas advertisers told us matter most–like geo, age and gender targeting; third-party verification and deploying the right brand suitability mechanisms for [advertisers] to make the best decisions for [their] brand.”

With that in mind, ad tier improvements are forthcoming for both marketers and customers.

Key measurement tools such as Nielsen DAR (Digital Ad Ratings), which offers deduplicated audience measurement metrics, and capabilities from EDO for ad campaign impact are on the way.

Additionally, Netflix has implemented two concurrent streams in all 12 markets where an ad tier is available, and improved video quality, with 1080p versus the initial 720p for ad tier users.

In its most recent earnings call, the streamer announced it added 5.9 million new subscribers (1.17 million paid subscribers in the U.S.), reaching 238.4 million globally. And many of those subs may be leaning towards the ad tier.

At the upfront in May, Greg Peters, co-CEO, Netflix, explained that on average more than a quarter of Netflix sign-ups now choose the ads plan in countries where it’s available, and nearly 80% of ad-supported viewing happens through a TV.