One of the most memorable moments came when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell appeared onstage with a Santa suit, the Netflix coat from your Christmas games, to announce the next Netflix NFL matchups. Plus, Jerry Jones made an appearance, too.
We were very excited about the games that we got, and by the way, within Netflix, most people were hearing the game pairings at that moment. So there are a lot of happy folks here because it’s a great matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Commanders, and then the Minnesota Vikings against the Detroit Lions. That was a great moment for Jerry to be there as well.
Year One was a success for the NFL Christmas games. What can we expect for Year Two? Will there be more opportunities for brands to get involved? Or how are you approaching that?
Yes, I think we have the luxury of a little bit more time now this year. We know what to expect. We know what the matchup is going to be, and we have the experience we had last year, obviously, with “Beyoncé Bowl” as well. You can expect something very similar. We are looking to have it be a monumental moment on Christmas. We know families are gathered around the TV, a perfect time to engage with both advertisers and our members. So I think you can imagine that it’s going to be similar to last year, and even better.
You announced 94 million monthly active users for the ads tier. But can you explain the numbers because that’s just accounts, correct? With the actual number of users, you said it was more like 170 million.
We have always anchored our count of monthly active users around profiles, because, to be honest, we want to make sure that we’re anchoring in data that we know, and so we have the data around our profiles that are logging in. The point that we also wanted to make is that people are hearing very large numbers the rest of the week. Those numbers are apples to oranges, because sometimes they’re including a person per household multiplier, or they’re including duplication across different platforms. So we just wanted to make sure that people understood a more apples-to-apples comparison based on research that we have of how many people are in the households that we are addressing, to make those numbers more analogous.
You can’t talk about upfront this year without mentioning tariffs. What’s the messaging you’re having with buyers?
We’ve been very optimistic about what we’re hearing from the market. I think everybody is taking a bit of a wait and see approach to understand how the rest of the year is going to net out, but we haven’t seen any pullback in marketing spend, and we are talking about a number of different opportunities in the back half of the year, whether it’s around integrated marketing opportunities or sponsorships around our the slate and the titles that we have coming back.
Because we’re smaller than other folks in terms of the size of the overall business—and we’re still looking to grow—we’re still optimistic, even in this macro environment, that we can accomplish what we need to do.
CMO Marian Lee introduced several Wednesday partnerships onstage, including Booking.com and a mysterious orange fingerprint for Cheetos, with details on the way later. What can you say about the evolving relationship with brands?
