Netflix Flexes Its Ad Muscles
Advertisers who were once lukewarm on Netflix’s ad offering are giving it another look.
When Netflix first launched an ad-supported tier in late 2022, buyers were concerned about the limited scale and targeting options – you know, the stuff that makes streaming worth the premium CPMs.
Then Amazon showed up with a very different playbook. Its Prime Video ad rollout in 2024 made ads the default for the entire subscriber base, unless people paid more to opt out. That meant immediate scale on Day One, not to mention the ability to target based on real-time shopping behavior.
But now that Netflix has grown its ad-supported subscriber base and built out its programmatic tech – including striking a recent partnership with Amazon DSP – four media buyers tell Digiday that they’re impressed with the upgrades.
Not that there isn’t still room for improvement. Netflix’s ad business only accounts for 3.3% of its total revenue.
For Netflix’s top brass, though, this whole ad tech drama is rather marginal. They’re, forgivably, a little distracted right now by their will-they-won’t-they bidding war with Paramount Skydance, which is Trump’s preferred buyer.
Hungry For More
OpenTable has decided it’s time to have a real stake (or should we say steak?) in advertising with the launch of its ads business.
On Tuesday, the restaurant reservation platform announced plans to launch OpenTable Media, which will let advertisers target audiences directly on OpenTable’s website or through its email newsletters, as well as via in-restaurant marketing. The platform also provides aggregated data on diners.
Robin Chiang, OpenTable’s chief growth officer, tells Adweek that while a handful of brands had always shown interest in partnering over the years – one-off sponsorship experiences, for example – it only recently became clear that this could be a platform-based opportunity for the company.
Notably, OpenTable’s retail media business goes beyond standard ad units. Think in-restaurant pop-ups and immersive experiences. That explains why pilot partners include alcohol brands like Diageo and Cobra Beer, as well as Ghirardelli chocolate.
“Restaurants tell the story of cities,” Chiang said. “Brands want to tap into that.”
We Regret The Tech Error
AI is a nebulous buzzword, used to describe everything from decade-old algorithms to flashy new generative black boxes.
Which is why it’s so interesting that companies are starting to shift blame away from AI when their tech goes awry.
Deadline reports on a news alert notification that Google sent to users about the recent BAFTA controversy (which is a whole other can of worms – here’s a good breakdown). The notification included usage of the N-word, which Deadline originally attributed to AI run amok.
Except, according to Google, it was not an AI error. The tech giant tells Deadline that its systems “recognised a euphemism for an offensive term on several web pages, and accidentally applied the offensive term to the notification text.”
Setting aside how wild that is as an excuse – What kind of a company trains its algorithms to pull a reverse Tyson Hom2osexual scenario? – the correction mirrors a similar story that surfaced last week. In that case, Amazon Web Services blamed a recent outage on “user error, not AI error,” despite the fact that, yes, the error stemmed from Amazon’s internal AI solution.
Google’s foul-up also serves as a cautionary tale for brand safety and verification tech in the AI era. Blame everything but the black box.
But Wait! There’s More!
The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics scored the highest Winter Games viewership since 2016, almost doubling Beijing 2022, which was admittedly a down year. [Axios]
Paramount Skydance submitted its sweetened bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the details of which have not been disclosed. [Variety]
Nvidia who? Meta just committed to a $60 billion deal with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. over five years for chips and computers. [Bloomberg]
Roku’s new ad deals and cost-cutting measures will bring it back to full-year profitability for the first time since 2021. [WSJ]
Multiple Goldman Sachs analysts have reported skepticism about how much AI tech is actually adding to US economic growth. [Gizmodo]
Meanwhile, American and Chinese companies plan to launch data centers in space, and that could put lower-income, less developed countries at an even greater disadvantage. [Rest of World]
Could a fake news post on X trigger a total market collapse? Well, yeah, probably. [Fortune]
You’re Hired!
Comcast Advertising appoints former Snap executive James Borow as general manager of Universal Ads. [release]
Adswerve hires Tom Zawacki as CEO. [release]
LoopMe recruits Michael Scott as CRO. [release]
Adlook names Darren Thomas VP of sales for the UK. [Mediashotz]
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