Netflix was born as the great alternative for audiovisual content without advertising. But, today, advertiser investment represents one of their most relevant strategic vectors. According to the latest “Platform Insights” report by Warc Media, the platform will double its advertising revenue this year, reaching $3 billion, and will exceed $8 billion in 2030.

Although advertising billing still represents only 3% of its total revenue, the projected evolution marks a phase change where Netflix would deliberately gain share. According to Warc’s forecasts, the company will go from concentrating 3.7% of global spending on connected television (CTV) in 2025 to 9.2% in 2027. In just two years, one in every ten dollars invested in CTV could end up on Netflix.

Celeste Huang, Media Insights Analyst at Warc Media and author of the report, notes that the platform is expanding its reach “beyond video to become a global entertainment hub”relying on live sports, cultural events and a perception of high quality and trust, both on the part of brands and viewers.

In 2025, its advertising revenue exceeded $1.5 billion. The immediate objective is to double that figure in 2026 to 3 billion, according to Omdia data, and progressively scale it to 8 billion in 2030.

In the United States, during the second quarter of 2025, the categories that invested the most in the platform were Retail (82 million dollars), Consumer Goods (78 million), Financial Services (66 million), Travel and Tourism (54 million) and Telecommunications (44 million). It is a mix that reproduces the historical heart of television, but on a digital level.

The battle between Netflix and YouTube for screen time

Scale continues to be the great competitive argument. Netflix declares a global reach of close to 1 billion people and 200 billion hours consumed annually. In the fourth quarter of 2025 it reached 315 million paid subscriptions. But in addition to volume, it’s also about profile. According to data collected by Warc from Ipsos Global Influentials, Netflix has achieved especially high penetration among high-net-worth individuals. Globally, 69% of this segment is subscribed to the platform, with peaks of 85% in Latin America and 78% in the United States. Europe and the MENA region register 68% penetration among high-net-worth audiences, while Asia-Pacific presents 55%, which points to a relevant margin for growth.

This data adds a key strategic dimension to the advertising market of a platform that has a massive scale and, at the same time, a concentration of audiences with high purchasing power. For certain categories such as luxury, premium automotive, financial services or international tourism, the attraction is twofold: qualified service and purchasing power.

Now, that strength does not eliminate competitive pressure. In the United Kingdom and the United States, the platform accounts for more than half of subscription video on demand (SVOD) consumption. However, average viewing time per user is declining and free services, especially YouTube, are increasingly competing for television screen time, particularly among younger people.

Netflix already recognizes YouTube as a direct competitor in the battle for attention on TV. But its response will not be to replicate the user-generated content model, but to reinforce its positioning around premium storytelling: its own narrative, strong intellectual property and original production as differential elements.

Thus, it will carry out its expansion into new areas such as live sports broadcasts, cultural events, entry into video podcasts – which the company defines as an evolution of the modern talk show – and a growing commitment to cloud gaming, both on mobile and on television. The objective is to extend the impact of your IP, reinforce retention and fill gaps in engagement.

In parallel, an eventual acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery could expand its catalog and reinforce its ability to monetize high-attention audiences, strengthening what the company understands as its content-based growth wheel.

Trust, attention and fandom as business assets

On a qualitative level, Netflix starts with a certain reputational advantage. According to Kantar, it is the fourth best perceived global platform in terms of advertising trust, only behind YouTube, Instagram and Google, and the only one of the group that competes with a strict content curation environment against platforms dominated by UGC.
Consumers describe ads on Netflix as more entertaining and higher quality, especially when supported by personalized dynamic formats.

The Warc report also highlights the strategic weight of fandom among Generation Z. 70% of young people say they trust more in brands that demonstrate a deep understanding of their favorite narrative universes and 74% say they are more willing to buy products aligned with those franchises.

Netflix is ​​therefore no longer simply a subscription platform that experiments with advertising. It is an actor that aspires to become a structural node of the global CTV ecosystem by combining three vectors: massive scale, high-attention premium environment and strategic exploitation of intellectual property. If it reaches 9.2% of global spending on CTV in 2027, it will become one of the largest advertising operators in the digital environment.