Netflix has touted a 150% increase in upfront ad sales commitments over 2023 during its second year of Upfront negotiations, noting deals with all major holding companies as well as independent agencies.

The results are in-line with expectations, and include investments from all key categories such as CPG, Tech & Entertainment, Auto, QSR, and Retail.

Netflix has also closed partnerships for a number of upcoming films and series including fan-favorites Squid Game, Wednesday, Outer Banks, Happy Gilmore 2, Ginny & Georgia, and Love is Blind as well as deals around highly anticipated live events including WWE Raw, and the Christmas Day NFL games.

"Our advertising clients remain excited about our highly engaged audience and the variety and quality of our programming," Netflix President, Advertising, Amy Reinhard said. "For Season 3 of Bridgerton - our sixth most popular English-language TV series of all time - we secured multiple international on-screen title sponsors including Pure Leaf, Amazon Audible, Puig, Booking.com, Stella Artois, and Hilton."

Last week, Netflix partnered with LVMH, COTY Gucci, Kaiku Caffee Latte, Aeromexico, Google, and Rakuten for the highly anticipated return of Emily in Paris.

"As we announced in May, we are giving advertisers new ways to buy, new insights to leverage, and new ways to measure impact. We’re looking forward to the launch of our in-house ad tech platform, which will be tested in Canada in November and launched globally in 2025," Reinhard continued.

Expanded Buying Capabilities are now on offer for advertisers. The first is the ability for marketers to set up private one-to-one marketplace deals directly with Netflix through The Trade Desk, Google’s Display & Video 360, or Xandr. We’re working to extend the capabilities across different buy types including programmatic guarantee in November. In addition, Netflix has introduced Google’s Campaign Manager 360 and Innovid for impression verification and extended existing DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science relationships for fraud and viewability verification into programmatic channels. These solutions will then be available across all buying channels in October.

"Over the last few weeks, we’ve been executing multiple programmatic campaigns with advertisers such as Expedia, Ford, T-Mobile, Mercedes-Benz, Novartis, and American Eagle," Reinhard said. The programmatic private marketplace buys are currently available in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico and will be extended more globally in the following months.

New Measurement Partnerships were also discussed at the Upfront. This September, Netflix’s ad-supported plan will be available in Barb's Advance Campaign Hub (ACH), and is designed to make it easier for UK advertisers to plan their campaigns. In coming months, Netflix will extend its campaign performance measurement suite into NielsenOne, Lucid (or Cint), EDO, NCSolutions, Kantar, and Affinity Solutions for all buy types.

Clean room suppliers are another partnerships mechanism, and Netflix has teamed up with Snowflake, InfoSum, and LiveRamp to create a secure and privacy-safe environment for members and advertisers. The Clean Rooms will allow advertisers to determine audience overlap, post-campaign reach and frequency, and last-touch attribution in a secure environment. Snowflake Data Clean Rooms is available for partners today, and InfoSum and LiveRamp will launch in the coming months.

"Over the last few months, we’ve hit great milestones for our ads business including closing another successful Upfront market, building and implementing an expanded programmatic suite, enhancing our global measurement capabilities, and securing impactful global ad campaigns," said Reinhard.

"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."