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TV & Streaming

Netflix execs say ad sales revenue is set to double this year

The streamer, which has nearly completed its upfront, grew overall revenue 16% in the quarter, it announced Thursday.

a large red N from the Netflix logo outside of an office building

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3 min read

Fresh off of 120 Emmy nominations, Netflix beat analyst expectations and reported second-quarter revenue of $11.08 billion, up 16%.

In the United States and Canada, revenue grew 15% year over year, the company reported in its quarterly earnings on Thursday, despite broader macroeconomic uncertainty. Netflix also upped its full-year revenue guidance to around $45 billion.

This is Netflix’s second earnings report since it stopped reporting subscriber numbers except in the case of significant milestones, and this quarter, it did not provide any updates to its subscriber count.

“Things all look stable,” co-CEO Greg Peters said on an earnings call Thursday. “Big picture, entertainment in general and Netflix specific[ally] have been historically pretty resilient in tougher economic times.”

Supersize me: Netflix’s ads tier, which the company said during its upfront had 94 million monthly active users, continues its build-out, and its “US upfront is nearly complete,” according to a company shareholder letter. Overall, the company expects ad revenue to “roughly double” this year, CFO Spencer Neumann said on the call.

The streamer’s ad-tech offerings are also continuing to roll out. Peters confirmed on the call that its in-house platform, Netflix Ads Suite, is now fully available in all countries that offer an ad tier. To offer increased options for ad buyers, Netflix also inked a deal with Yahoo DSP last month.

Goin’ global: Netflix users spent over 95 billion hours streaming programming in the first half of 2025, according to an engagement report published on Thursday, and some of that time spent is thanks to Netflix’s increasingly global footprint. More than a third of that time was spent on non-English-language titles, and of the 25 most-watched series in the first half of the year, 10 were in a language other than English. As it continues to build its international portfolio of content, Netflix inked a deal with French broadcaster TF1 last month to bring more live and on-demand programming to the platform.

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Of course, the streamer continues to focus on live programming, including sports and reality. That includes a reboot of the unscripted talent show Star Search, Ted Sarandos, co-CEO, said on the call, and two Christmas Day NFL games. And earlier this month, it livestreamed two sporting events concurrently for the first time: the Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano boxing match and WWE SmackDown.

“If you look at our current capabilities around live, we are in just a completely different place today compared to when we first started,” Peters said.

Get a makeover: On the product side, Netflix in May unveiled a refreshed home screen designed to promote discoverability and shareability. It marked the first time the streamer had made significant changes to the interface in 12 years, and execs emphasized that the changes reflect the company’s ambitions to own more TV time.

“Bluntly, the previous experience was designed for the Netflix of 10 years ago, and the business has evolved considerably since then,” Peters said. “We got a wider breadth of entertainment options. We got TV and film: more of those, of course, from around the world, but now also games and live events. If you think about the discovery experience that’s best suited for these new content types, it’s…helping our members understand that there’s a really good reason for them to launch Netflix and tune in at 7pm on a Friday night versus just showing up whenever they were free.”

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