Netflix’s ad-supported tier has reached 94 million monthly active users across the world, up from 70 million last November. Engagement on each of those accounts is now 41 hours a month.The stats were announced Wednesday at the streaming giant’s upfront presentation to advertisers in New York.Netflix launched its ads business in 2022, after insisting for many years it would never run ads.Amy Reinhard, Netflix’s President of Advertising, said the tier reaches more 18-34-year-olds than any other U.S. broadcast or cable network. Extrapolating the 94 million figure (which is the number of profiles watching ads) as other companies do, she said, the net number of viewers tuning in is 170 million. Ads members in the US are highly engaged, spending an average of 41 hours per month on Netflix in the U.S.The company also announced The Netflix Ads Suite, an in-house advertising platform just launched in the U.S. and Canada. It will be up and running next week in EMEA and available in all 12 ad-supported countries by June. Agency Grateau’s Emily Cooper (the Emily in Paris character played by Lily Collins) explained in the video that the platform allows advertisers to target “more than 100 interests in over 17 categories — including life stages.”Subscriber engagement with Netflix advertising is stronger than that of rival services, Reinhard maintained.“When you compare us to our competitors, attention starts higher and ends much higher. And even more impressive, members pay as much attention to mid-roll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves,” she said.A lot of streaming companies “are either/or,” the exec added. “Either they have great technology, or they have great entertainment. Our superpower has always been the fact that we have both.”Like other ad-tech offerings rolled out by other companies this week, a new set of Netflix tools aim to find more precise matches between ads and programming. The more contextually relevant the ads, the logic goes, the better the returns on ad spending.A new modular framework for ad formats uses generative AI to instantly marry advertisers’ ads with the worlds of our shows. Reinhard unveiled the first capability with interactive midroll and pause formats that build custom advertising creative with features like added overlays, calls to action and second screen buttons. The formats will be available by 2026 in all ad-supported countries,“The foundation of our business is in place,” Reinhard said. “From here, the pace of progress is going to be even faster,”
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