Bridget Hall, Planning Director, Americas for M&C Saatchi Performance, a performance marketing agency with eight offices worldwide including New York, LA, Sydney and London, reckons advertisers are excited about the influx of streaming TV innovation and more inventory options spurred by Netflix and Disney product updates, but says: “The bar has been set high by direct partners like Roku and programmatic vendors like TradeDesk, and advertisers expect robust targeting and advanced measurement for cross-device conversion tracking.”
Hall adds: “Initial speculation is that the Netflix CPMs are high [confirmed to us in various conversations], and the targeting may not be as advanced [Netflix said yesterday that there would only be country and genre-based targeting at launch for its new advertising tier].” Hall goes on to say that the quality of Netflix’s content and the engagement of its audience is as important as its pricing, and that “Netflix will need to prove realistically how unduplicated the Netflix audience is, and what personalisation and features they can support to compete with Roku.”
Netflix is starting to address measurement concerns. In the UK it has joined BARB, which is considered a definitive and trusted source of what people are watching (as an industry-owned audience currency). BARB has been tracking streaming services since November 2021 and from November 1 the company will report Netflix viewing every day at both a service and a programme level to its clients (as it does for over 300 broadcast channels, BVOD and AVOD/SVOD services).
