When Emily Cooper is the one pitching advertisers, things are clearly going trés magnifique.
Netflix’s third upfront week event, held last week at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York, included announcements that its ad tier had grown to 94 million monthly active users globally, the introduction of new AI-powered formats the put brands in the worlds of shows like Wednesday and Stranger Things, and a cameo by Lily Collins’ character from Emily in Paris pitching advertisers on the company’s in-house adtech.
In addition to the ad updates, the streaming giant previewed its upcoming slate, including revealing its newly announced Christmas Day NFL game matchups and teasing new seasons of Wednesday, Stranger Things, The Diplomat, Forever, The Four Seasons, and more, along with new projects such as Jamie Foxx’s Fight for ’84 and Denzel Washington and Daisy Edgar-Jones in Here Comes the Flood.
Following ADWEEK’s conversations with NBCUniversal, Fox, Amazon, TelevisaUnivision, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix’s ads president, Amy Reinhard, spoke to us about the company’s updated adtech, its evolving approach to its NFL Christmas games, and how exactly the company got Emily Cooper for its event.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
ADWEEK: What were the priorities heading into this upfront event?
Reinhard: We wanted to get two messages across. One, which is what we’ve been working on over the course of the last year, is the fact that we launched the ad suite, and are excited about the international rollouts of that coming up here in the next six weeks. So that was the first priority. The second priority was to marry that with our fantastic content slate and bring out the stars.
In terms of what I’m excited about, I would just say launching our ad suite takes us to a whole new level, because the operational complexity is reduced for us. I talked a lot about being able to test and learn and iterate quickly, and so the pace of innovation—that’s going to be quickened in the future.
