A Guide to Running an Effective Netflix Advertising Campaign

Netflix marketing is quickly gaining momentum.

Netflix is undoubtedly one of the most popular streaming services, with over 260 million subscribers. This means that there is a massive audience that your brand can reach out and market to. 

 With their ad-supported plans, Netflix allows brands to advertise their products on the platform, using commercial breaks and other methods in TV shows and movies.  In this article, we will guide you through the process of advertising on Netflix.

Why Netflix Advertising Is Effective

Social media can be an effective advertising platform for businesses of all sizes, from small enterprises seeking to reach new audiences to large companies aiming to increase brand awareness. Netflix offers similar benefits to social media.

When you advertise on their streaming service, you can get a highly targeted audience that is moving away from the traditional media channels. The platform also provides advertisers with powerful campaigns and personalized messages. You can ensure your business reaches the right people by partnering with Netflix.

With the introduction of the more affordable membership tier with ads, Netflix membership is expected to rise to over  500 million subscribers. This is such a vast audience that you cannot afford to ignore. Besides, with the advertising packages only introduced in 2022, brands have yet to fully exploit them as compared to other platforms like Instagram or YouTube. Therefore, you will likely face less competition on  Netflix advertising than other social media channels.

Overall, investing in a Netflix ad campaign can help you to:

Does Netflix Advertising Work?

For years, Netflix has always marketed itself as a no-ad streaming platform. This led to an increase in its popularity as many users had a seamless user experience. However, in 2022, Netflix launched an affordable plan dubbed  Basic With Ads. The idea is for subscribers to pay a  lower fee in exchange for  viewing ads in between their streaming services.

Netflix ads are inserted during commercial breaks.

This plan allowed brands to advertise their producers and services to their viewers on Netflix. Going by the  15 million people who had subscribed to the plan within a year of launch, this was proof of the plan’s success. 

The Netflix Basic With Ads Plans allows advertisers to create ads that feature them as content sponsors. In some countries, the ad-supported plans also enable brands to showcase their products or services through:

  • Commercial breaks in movies and TV shows
  • Limited sponsorship messages

Even on the other plans, Netflix includes commercial breaks and other ads. 

How to Advertise on Netflix Basic with Ads Campaign

Here are the steps you need to follow when advertising on Netflix. 

Understand the Netflix ad policy.

Netflix allows you to run an ad for  15 to 30 seconds. The ads usually run before and after the streaming.  With such a short time to wow viewers and hundreds of advertisers to compete with, it is advisable to create an attention-grabbing ad.

This will ensure maximum exposure to viewers. Netflix also limits the maximum number of ads a person can view daily and the number of times an ad can repeat itself. Viewers are shown ads for around 4 minutes in an hour, even though this will depend on the program you are watching.  

Understand the ad targeting option.

While targeting options have yet to be implemented in  Netflix advertising, there are reports that the platform will offer country and GEO targeting. Depending on your target  audience, you will be able to target your audience according to the:

  • Country
  • Age group
  • Gender
  • TImeof the day
  • Content rating

You can also target having your ad featured in the daily ranking of the top 10 TV shows and films trending on the platform. Doing that can increase your ad exposure and improve brand awareness.

Set an objective for your campaign.

 When advertising on Netflix, you need to have a clear marketing objective that should be in line with your overall marketing objectives. Some of  the common social media advertising goals that brands have in mind are:

  • Drive more sales
  • Increase social media traffic
  • Improve conversion rate
  • See growth in the number of subscribers
  • Increase signups to an email list, course, etc
  • Promote a particular program or music.

When setting your Netflix advertising goals, ensure that these are specific, measurable, and achievable.  For instance, instead of saying you want to grow your subscribers, you can put an exact figure like growing from 1k to 10k followers. This will enable you to measure if you are achieving them or not.

Plan your advertising tactic.

Once you have a goal, it’s time to create an advertising plan. You should consider using a variety of Netflix ads to reach your target audience.  For instance, you can use sponsorship messages in combination with commercial break ads.

Monitor and optimize your Netflix campaigns.

For the best results, you need to regularly monitor the performance of your social media ads to determine if you are achieving your desired results.  You will now measure the results from the goals you set in the previous step. Depending on the results, keep optimizing your Netflix advertising campaigns. For instance, if the commercial break ads give you better results, you can increase their numbers.

Understand the Netflix advertising cost explained.

When it was launched, the Netflix advertising CPM was estimated at $65 to $80. However, in the recent past, the cost has been going down. Ad buyers have reported paying as little as $39 to $45 per CPM. Working with these figures, you can now allocate a budget for social media advertising.

Pay for the Netflix advertising campaign.

You can pay for Netflix advertising through Microsoft and other ad tech partners. Currently, there is a minimum amount of which you can purchase.

Final Thoughts

With a Netflix advertisement campaign, you can put your brand in the eyes of a brand-new, engaging audience. Netflix advertising campaigns can pay off if you have the funds and want a good platform. With its low competition level, it’s one of the creative ways of small business advertising.  By using our guide, it should be easy to get started with Netflix advertising.

Benjamin is a writer with over ten years of experience in the content writing field. He holds a Bachelor's degree in  Journalism from Strathmore University. He writes on various niches such as product reviews, self-improvement, and making mone online. You can find him curled on his couch with a self-improvement book when he is not blogging.