April 20, 2022

Coming to a screen near you: Ads on Netflix, and brand opportunities

Key insights in this post:

– More streamers are exploring ad-supported tiers, and our Content Intelligence reveals insights around how brands can make the most of this opportunity

– The Bridgerton audience heavily favors beauty brands (+25% overindex) over other categories

– Old Navy audience is most anticipating Fast Color on Amazon Prime Video, while the Pampers audience is looking forward to both Uglies and Unfrosted on Netflix. The audience for the video game Apex Legends is most excited for The Last of Us and The Batman on HBO Max

For years Netflix has professed that it wasn’t exploring advertising. In recent months, the general consensus among industry commentators has been that it was only a matter of time before it had to — and that moment came during the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call on April 19.

As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explained, “Those who have followed Netflix, know that I’ve been against the complexity of advertising, and a big fan of the simplicity of subscription. But as much as I’m a fan of that, I’m a bigger fan of consumer choice and allowing consumers, who would like to have a lower price and are advertising tolerant, get what they want, makes a lot of sense.”

Many other streaming services have already made the switch: HBO Max launched an ad-supported tier in 2021 and Disney+ is following suit later this year. Here at Diesel, we’ve been using our data platform to make sense of this new landscape and provide Content Intelligence to help brands strategize around the emerging opportunities.

Looking at one of Netflix’s biggest Q1 titles, Bridgerton, our data show this audience heavily favors beauty brands (+25% overindex) compared to other categories, with Fenty Beauty, KVD Beauty and Rimmel topping the list.

 

For the audience of one of Disney+’s biggest Q1 titles, The Book of Boba Fett, we dove into beverage brands and found that Folgers, Coke Zero and Ocean Spray top the list. That said, there’s also a robust portfolio of Pepsi brands rounding out the top 10.

 

Looking at the data from another perspective, we checked out which upcoming releases brand-engaged audiences are looking forward to the most on these historically non ad-supported platforms.

For example, the Old Navy audience is most anticipating Fast Color on Amazon Prime Video.

 

We can also see that the Pampers brand-engaged audience is looking forward to both Uglies and Unfrosted on Netflix.

 

Last but not least, we looked at the Apex Legends video game audience and found they are most excited for The Last of Us adaptation as well as The Batman animated series, both coming to HBO Max, as well as Gundam on Netflix.

 

Stay tuned for more brand insights as we continue to analyze the transformation taking place across the media industry!