- Netflix has been hiring top ad sales execs and slashed ad rates to grow its ad-supported tier.
- Advertisers are waiting to see the offering gain scale to justify allocating more spending to it.
- Meet 23 top execs who are working to win advertising dollars in the tough 2023 market.
Netflix is making headway, slowly but surely, in the development of its advertising business.
The company said it's signed up 10 million monthly active users for its $7-per-month ads plan, Basic with Ads. While execs said on the company's most recent earnings call that there's a lot of work ahead, they were still confident advertising could become a meaningful revenue contributor for Netflix in the years to come. On the company's first-quarter earnings call in April, execs revealed that Basic with Ads was earning more revenue per member than Netflix's standard plan in the US.
Advertisers have expressed impatience about the pace of Netflix's ad tier growth since Basic with Ads was rolled out last November. Marketers are excited about having another high-quality ad environment with a desirable audience but have said the offering is still too small to justify big investments.
To appeal to advertisers, Netflix has slashed rates and announced measurement and targeting initiatives that let advertisers run spots against top shows or new series. It has cut its CPM (cost to reach 1,000 viewers) by about 30%, two ad execs told Insider, from the initial rate of as much as $65.
Early critics who lambasted the service for being too aggressive with pricing told Insider they're now giving them credit for solving early snags with underdelivering on some advertisers' campaigns.
Netflix has also assembled a dream team of salespeople from across the advertising ecosystem — including digital platforms like Hulu and Snap, agencies like GroupM, and traditional TV networks like ABC — to grow that revenue.
The streamer initially enlisted Microsoft as a tech and sales partner to help it launch an ads tier quickly. But under worldwide advertising president Jeremi Gorman and VP Peter Naylor — poached in August 2022 from Snap — it also began building its own team, and Netflix salespeople increasingly are taking over conversations with advertisers.
Netflix has also started organizing itself similarly to other big ads sellers, assigning dedicated salespeople to the top ad holding companies like Publicis and Omnicom and striking deals with third-party companies Nielsen, DoubleVerify, and Integral Ad Science to measure and verify their ads.
"They're doing a great job building awareness, reaching out, relationship-building," said Kelly Metz, managing director of Advanced TV Activation at Omnicom Media Group. "They've hired the right salespeople to go after the right people to have the right conversations. The challenge is, they need more scale."
Here's a rundown of the top players running Netflix's ads business and what to watch for as they fight for scale and market share in the softest ad environment in recent memory.
Jeremi Gorman, president, worldwide advertising
At the top of the org is Gorman, who was hired in August 2022 away from Snap, where she was chief business officer. Before that, she had ad leadership roles at Amazon and Yahoo. Peter Naylor came along as her No. 2, one of many Snap alums who've joined Gorman's team.
Peter Naylor, VP of global advertising sales
Naylor joined Netflix with Gorman in summer 2022 from Snap, where he was VP of sales. He held sales leadership roles at Hulu and NBCUniversal before that. Naylor has recruited several former colleagues from Hulu, including Julie DeTraglia and Kinsey Tamberrino. He's said to be bringing his Hulu playbook to Netflix, seeking big deals with a limited number of agencies, which is a way to enable quality control and keep prices high.
Adam Gerber, senior director for client development
Gerber is steeped in the agency and traditional TV world, having been a vet of ad agency Essence and Disney/ABC Television Group. He keeps advertisers informed through Netflix's customer advisory board and is working on new kinds of ad formats and targeting, which advertisers have been clamoring for. One he's told the agency world about is the "pause ad" that pops up when the viewer pauses a show — while it's not a pioneering format, it would be an advancement from the company's current basic spots.
Julie DeTraglia, VP of ads measurement strategy
DeTraglia is a longtime, respected research pro who most recently was global head of sports strategy and research at Amazon; earlier, she was VP and head of research at Hulu. She's in charge of helping Netflix get its measurement and data reporting in place.
Asaf Davidov, director, ad measurement strategy
Davidov was brought on by DeTraglia, whom he worked under in research at Hulu, and is seen as key to building out Netflix's ad measurement efforts. He also worked in ad measurement leadership roles at Roku and Disney.
David Roter, senior director, global client partnerships
One of Netflix's newest ad hires, Roter came on board this August to run global client partnerships, reporting to Naylor. He had served as VP, Global Agency & Brand Partnerships at Snap, where he was credited with helping engineer its ads turnaround a few years ago. He and Naylor were two of its top execs under then-chief business officer Gorman.
Jon Whitticom, ad platform advisor
Whitticom came on as an advisor in January, an appointment that's been closely watched because of its potential to help Netflix make a pivotal decision about how to level up its advertising services to marketers. Netflix could decide to build its own adtech stack, buy adtech, or evolve its Microsoft partnership. Whitticom formerly was chief product officer at Comcast-owned ad startup FreeWheel, where he was charged with integrating five advertising companies that handled planning and managing ad campaigns.
Netflix has also brought on several directors and other roles in ad sales who've worked at Hulu, Snap, and elsewhere. They are Kinsey Osberg Tamberrino, who is Publicis' main point of contact, and who spent eight years at Hulu, rising to director of advertising sales. Most recently, she was SVP of national sales at Vevo. Michaela Giovengo, who serves as ad holding company Omnicom Media Group's main contact, also was a longtime Hulu alum, rising to VP of performance marketing sales; she came to Netflix from a two-year stint at Disney.
Valerie Bischak, who serves as the contact for holding company IPG, was a 17-year vet of Viacom Media Network, rising to EVP; she most recently was GM at Amobee. Doug Brodman came to Netflix after four years at Twitter (now X), following roles at Google, NBCUniversal, and MediaVest.
Others at the director level are Victoria Morris, formerly head of video on Google's US video agency team, and Amy Newton, who heads US retail advertising and is a longtime Amazon vet, where she was last US head of fashion partnerships. Joanna Read, who handles business operations, came from Snap, where she was head of global strategic initiatives, advertiser solutions.
Eric Berman, director of ads strategic planning & analysis, worked in planning roles at Hulu and Disney. Chad Rumminger, who focuses on automotive accounts, from automotive ad sales at Twitter. Morgan Tully, the US vertical director for Tech/Gaming and Entertainment, came from TikTok, where she focused on the tech category, following sales roles at Amazon and Google.
Nicole Sabatini, a senior director for ad partner solutions, was the director of product marketing for YouTube's ads marketing division; she also spent five years at Hulu in integrated marketing. Julie Taylor Green is head of US vertical ad sales; she was TikTok's director of global business solutions before that. Chris Smutny also followed former Snap colleagues to Netflix, where he's senior director for sales operations.
Other recent hires are Jessica Masters, sales director, who joined from Roku; and Leah Doctor and Todd Walker, agency sales partners; both formerly of Twitter.
This article was first published on May 17 and has been updated to reflect new hires and additional new information.
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.
