Netflix ad president on its live event strategy, including Tyson-Paul bout and NFL Christmas games

Netflix’s ad business is at an “inflection point,” according to its president of advertising Amy Reinhard. The streamer is trying to scale more quickly by implementing a more robust programmatic business, developing in-house ad tech and continuing to draw viewers into its lower-priced ad tier. But recent developments—such as the ousting of former VP of ad sales Peter Naylor and difficulties selling its biggest live push yet, the Christmas Day NFL games—have raised questions about Netflix’s future ad strategy. Netflix is currently preparing to host a live boxing match between boxing legend Mike Tyson and YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul at 8 p.m. ET on Nov. 15. The partnership program for “Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson” is the largest of Netflix’s live events to date, according to Reinhard. Sponsors include Celsius, DraftKings, Experian, Meta Quest and Spaten. The fight will take place just over a year since Netflix announced its first live sporting event, “The Netflix Cup” golf tournament, as part of a push to give advertisers access to its full subscriber base—which stood around 278 million worldwide, according to its most recent earnings—and grow its ad-supported membership. Since then, Netflix has hosted several livestream events, including successes such as “The Roast of Tom Brady,” which was viewed 22.4 million times from its premiere in May to the end of June, according to Netflix. The streamer acquired the streaming rights to “Raw” and other progamming from World Wrestling Entertainment for $5 billion in January. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs While the Paul-Tyson fight was originally announced in March and scheduled for July, it was pushed back due to Tyson experiencing an ulcer flare-up. The longer timeline was helpful in developing the sponsorships, Reinhard said. DraftKings will sponsor a “Tale of the Bet” segment, which will showcase betting odds and match predictions. While the brand’s logo will also appear in the corner positions of the boxing ring mat, the event will not include direct links or QR codes that connect viewers to DraftKings’ betting platform, according to Reinhard. Celsius will present an “Essential Energy Highlight of the Fight” segment following each match and its logo will also be displayed in the center of the boxing mat. Also read: Streaming TV’s pricing and transparency issues Meta Quest and Experian will sponsor pre-fight segments featuring fighter bios and records, while Spaten will host watch parties throughout Brazil. All three brands’ logos will appear on the ring’s ropes. The event will stream in English and Portuguese. No additional advertisers will be shown in ad breaks during the event, said Reinhard. In the lead-up to the fight, the streamer will air a three-part “Countdown: Paul vs. Tyson” docuseries showcasing their preparations for the match. Reinhard spoke with Ad Age about Netflix’s live event ad strategy, its nearly sold-out Christmas Day NFL game slate and what she sees as the final obstacles preventing the streamer from reaching its full potential for marketers. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Media buyers have said boxing and wrestling are hard sells to advertisers. How have you addressed that in taking the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul match, as well as Netflix’s upcoming WWE Raw season, to the market? [Brand hesitation] has definitely been a discussion. One of the appeals is the fact that this is going to be across all three subscription plans, so you’re reaching into all of the subscribers within Netflix. Look at the Tom Brady event, look at the numbers that we did on that and the cultural zeitgeist that we tapped into. That’s what we’re really selling. What will having a regularly recurring live event like WWE Raw next year mean for advertisers compared to the one-offs you’ve had so far? WWE was part of our upfront, but [“Paul vs Tyson”] was done separate from upfront discussions because of the timing. It depends on what the advertisers want—if they’re looking for specific genres or specific targeting on demographics, we can offer that. There is “eventizing” around it. We will be working with our integrated marketing team to add custom pieces to some of these WWE weekly events. So it all just depends on what the advertiser is looking for. And then normal course of business—we’re still selling 15 [second ads], :30s and :60s around these events on a weekly basis. What have you learned from Netflix’s previous live events? First and foremost, and we had this hypothesis going into when we started this, we think it’s very, very important that all of these sponsorships and integrated marketing opportunities are very organic. So it really has to start with the programming. Sponsorships being on the rope, being on mat, being in the arena—people are used to seeing that, so that definitely feels organic and authentic. And that’s what we just wanted to make sure that we were leaning into. [The Tom Brady roast] just hit the mark in terms of not only driving viewership for the live event, but when you look at how many people viewed in the weeks after, we consider that definitely a success. For, like, 10 days after, you looked at Twitter or Threads, and saw the conversation. Why are live events critical to Netflix’s strategy as it grows its offering for advertisers? They’re a way to package together our offerings in the market. Some of these events help drive overall sales. So it’s about packaging; it’s also about programming. Our mission is to entertain the world, and we take that very seriously in terms of making sure that we’re offering content for all audiences and all cultures and of all genres and languages. We want to make sure that we have a wide swath of programming that’s going to appeal to a wide swath of members, and at the same time, the idea would be that we’re attracting a wider swath of advertisers who are looking at different demographics or thinking about how to target folks in a different way. Can you quantify what live events represent in the ad business? That’s really tough right now only because there’s not a portfolio. There’s been four that we’ve sponsored so far, and so when you look out at the course of the next year, certainly we’ve got NFL and WWE, but there will be other events that are coming on board that will represent part of that business as well. It’s still too early days for us to say a percentage because we just don’t have regularity yet in that portfolio. There’s been much made of reported difficulties selling Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL games. What is your perspective on how those conversations went? It’s very curious to me, because we’ve gotten really great reception to those games, and we are absolutely on a path for great sell through across a wide swath of advertisers. So from our perspective, it’s been very successful. I get that it’s Christmas Day, and so it’s like the timing of it all, but they’re really great games (Chiefs-Steelers and Ravens-Texans). We’re looking to make a Christmas Day event out of it. So I can understand from an advertiser calendar, that people may say dollars have already been spent right now. But again, based on the sell through that we’re seeing that hasn’t been our experience. More announcements to come, but we really want to “eventize” this, and I think that just makes it even a better proposition for the advertisers. We’ve sold out the halftime and we have great programs in place, so I’m very confident about where we’re at with that. Where do sales currently stand for the games? They are close to sold out, and we are very confident that in the fourth quarter, with the packaging and the bundling that we’re doing as part of our normal close of business, that we’ll get to that. Netflix leaders previously said that they didn’t expect ads to be a primary driver of revenue growth this year or next. Is that still the case? I think the question is, what is the definition of primary growth driver? I would say the momentum that we’re seeing in the business is fantastic, and we feel like we’re starting to fire on all cylinders. When we see the things that we have to execute on over the course of the next eight months in terms of our tech stack launch and taking back all of our markets in terms of the relationship with Microsoft, I think we are really starting to feel the momentum of the business. What other hurdles are ahead that Netflix needs to address to achieve its ad goals? We are seeing great growth on our subscriptions, and I can’t talk specifically about numbers there. From a penetration point in all of the markets, we are very satisfied relative to what we were hoping to achieve. And then in terms of the execution, those [ad tech and expanding programmatic markets] are the pieces that really have to fit into place. Also, things like measurement, which just takes time across different markets. Just getting those all integrated and up and running are the two biggest pivotal points in terms of the feedback that I’ve heard from advertisers about this inflection point. Being able to target right and tap into all of the data that we have around our member preferences and the content that they like to watch—we feel like that’s the unlock for us, and we will be executing on that over the next 12 months. [Also read: Retail media networks have a measurement issue] With recent shifts in Netflix’s ad business, there’s been a question of whether you’re going for the very premium, top-tier advertiser media business or whether the push for programmatic and in-house tech is pivoting to more of the Meta and Google approach. I think the programmatic piece is important to help scale the business. We are a young business growing up, and we certainly don’t have the types of sales forces yet that some of the other media partners have. Programmatic is a way to help us scale the business and help reach other advertisers beyond the ones that we’re able to reach in a direct method. The two things can go hand-in-hand. We want our direct sales team focusing on those scarce assets that can help package the rest of our inventory, and really focus on delivering results for advertisers that are more premium. Programmatic doesn’t necessarily mean less premium, it just helps us scale the business. Everybody just wants us to go faster. It’s my one-year anniversary, and to think how far we’ve come in terms of building our own tech stack, building our own sales force—all these things that we’ve accomplished in the past two years with the speed that we have is pretty remarkable. But everybody expects really great things of us in terms of innovation and leaning into the market in a different way and the member experience. There are so many exciting things to unlock, it’s just, unfortunately, some of these things take time to develop and you can’t necessarily do these things in parallel. You have to go through the process of building it out and building on it.

Netflix ad president on its live event strategy, including Tyson-Paul bout and NFL Christmas games

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