Some media buyers and strategists believe the top streaming service could give campaigns a new avenue to reach voters in 2024. Netflix’s ad-supported subscription tier launched last year, although it isn’t available on the company’s entire content library.
With the presidential cycle already seeing early ad spend, some political media buyers believe it’s inevitable that the company will open itself up to ad dollars.
“I think it’s only a matter of time for Netflix to accept political advertising,” Tim Cameron, co-founder and CEO of GOP shop FlexPoint Media, told C&E. “When you look at Google’s numbers reaching about $500 million per cycle, and then you look at the multiples at which Google’s trading at and Netflix is trading at, by not being in political advertising, Netflix is literally leaving billions of dollars in shareholder value off the table right now because they don’t want to engage with political.
“I think they’ll start getting tough questions on quarterly calls about whether they’re going to participate in this presidential election because Netflix could easily receive $500 million worth of advertising in a given cycle if they were to open up to political.”
Other practitioners worry that even if Netflix does accept political ad dollars, its targeting options will be limited. Moreover, Bully Pulpit Interactive’s Mike Schneider notes how fractured the CTV/OTT audience is, which means that Netflix won’t be a silver bullet for political marketers.
“Netflix is exciting, but the way this space is fractured is so unbelievable. Something like half of CTV viewers use three or four or more apps. Smart buying here requires looking past the obvious big, single platform and making sure you’re reaching people in all the spaces where they’re watching media.”
While he was excited by the potential impact of Netflix accepting political ad dollars, he cautioned on its current targeting options.
“Right now, they’re focused much more on broad, national buys with a little bit less targeting. So the applicability to political campaigns, who are so focused on reaching the right voters, is a little bit less,” Schneider said. “But it could really shake up the CTV space if they allow for a little bit better targeting.”
