For years, the whole point of Netflix was that it didn’t have adverts. That changed in late 2022, when it launched a cheaper subscription that includes them, and a large share of its UK viewers have since chosen that plan. So you can now advertise on Netflix, and what we’re usually asked is how it works and whether it’s a sensible place for a business that isn’t a household name.
How adverts work on Netflix
Viewers on the plan with adverts see short breaks before and during the programmes and films they watch. There are fewer adverts than you’d see on a traditional channel, and viewers can’t skip them.
Because Netflix is mostly watched on a television, your advert is seen full screen, with the sound on, by people who’ve settled in to watch something they chose, which is a very different thing from an advert that somebody scrolls past on a phone. In the way it’s watched, it’s much closer to traditional TV advertising, and in one respect it’s an easier place to be noticed, because a shorter break leaves fewer other advertisers on either side of you.
How many homes you can reach
In Ofcom’s 2026 report on the nation’s viewing habits, 26% of viewers named Netflix and 25% named the BBC as the first place they go when they’re looking for something to watch, a gap small enough that Ofcom treats the two as level. What matters to an advertiser, though, is how many of those households are on the plan that carries adverts, because the rest have paid to avoid them and can’t be reached at any price.
For a long time that would have been hard to answer, because Netflix kept its viewing figures to itself. At about the time it started selling advertising, it signed up to Barb, the body that measures TV viewing in the UK, and Barb has reported on Netflix viewing since November 2022. So the numbers now come from the same independent source as ITV’s and Channel 4’s, and a media buyer can weigh one against the other. Barb’s figures for the first three months of 2026 put the plan with adverts in 7.2 million UK homes, which is 40% of the homes that have Netflix and roughly a quarter of all the homes in the country.
That’s a very large audience, and it has been growing. It also tells you something about how Netflix is best used, because around three homes in four won’t see a Netflix advert however well it’s aimed.
Choosing who sees your advert
Within that audience, Netflix lets advertisers choose who sees their advert, as the other streaming services do. The options include things like age, gender and location, as well as the kind of programmes people are watching, so your advert could appear around comedy, drama or documentaries, depending on who you’re trying to reach.
That makes it possible for a regional business to advertise on Netflix without paying to reach the whole country, which wasn’t something anyone would have predicted a few years ago. The thing to keep in mind is that every choice you make narrows the field. Imagine a garden centre that only wants to reach people over 45 in the towns around it. If the area is a typical one, Netflix can show adverts in about a quarter of its homes to begin with, and each condition takes some more away, so the number of households left to show the advert to can turn out to be quite small. A media buyer can tell you whether there are enough of them where you trade to make it worthwhile, and if there aren’t, there are other ways of advertising on TV by postcode that might suit a tightly local campaign better.
The advert itself
You don’t need a special advert for Netflix. A well-made TV commercial, usually 15 or 30 seconds long, can run on Netflix as well as on ITV, Sky and Channel 4, and since Netflix is likely to be one part of a wider campaign, that means the cost of making it is spread across everywhere it’s shown. What Netflix does ask for is quality, because your advert will be appearing in the middle of some of the most expensively produced programmes in the world, and anything that looks cheap is going to stand out for the wrong reasons.
It also has to be an advert people can watch more than once without tiring of it. People often watch two or three episodes of a series in one sitting, so the same household may well meet your advert several times in a week, and sometimes more than once in an evening. An advert with a clear idea and something to enjoy in it stands up to that far better than one that reads out an offer, which is a good reason to put the effort into the idea before anything is filmed.
On the practical side, Netflix has its own technical specifications and its own rules about what adverts can and can’t contain, so the finished file has to be prepared and checked with those in mind, and that’s part of what we do when we deliver an advert. If yours has already been approved by Clearcast for the broadcasters, the claims in it have been examined once already, which stands it in good stead with anybody else’s rules.
How it’s booked
The booking is where Netflix differs most from traditional TV. Netflix sells its advertising to agencies and media buyers, either directly or through the specialist trading platforms they use, and it isn’t something most businesses would set up for themselves. It’s normally handled by a media buyer who has access to those platforms and knows how to plan a campaign across them, and that’s how we do it. We concentrate on making the advert, and our media buying partners plan and book the airtime, on Netflix and anywhere else that’s right for you.
There’s real judgement in that planning, because somebody has to decide which audiences are worth paying for and how much of the budget Netflix should have compared with everything else. They also set a limit on how often the same household is shown your advert, which is what stops an evening of back-to-back episodes from wearing out its welcome.
What the response looks like
The response to a campaign on Netflix isn’t quite what people picture when they think of TV. On a traditional channel, everybody watching sees your advert at the same moment, and an advert that asks people to go online can produce a visible jump in website visits a few minutes later. On Netflix, as on the broadcasters’ own streaming services, the advert is delivered to each household whenever that household happens to be watching, so the response is spread across the days and weeks of the campaign and shows up as a gradual rise. That doesn’t mean it’s working any less well, only that you’d judge it by the overall level of visits and enquiries while you’re on air, and we’ve written more about how to measure a TV campaign.
Is Netflix right for your business?
It might be, but we’d rarely suggest it as the only place you advertise. Netflix tends to work best as one part of a wider TV campaign, alongside the broadcasters’ channels and their streaming services. Those reach the many homes that Netflix can’t, and Netflix in turn reaches people who watch less ordinary television than they used to, so the two fill in each other’s gaps. A good media buyer will look at who you’re trying to reach and tell you honestly whether Netflix deserves a share of the budget.
We’ve written about the bigger picture in TV advertising in 2027, and about advertising on Amazon Prime Video, which is Netflix’s closest rival. There’s also more on why we work the way we do in why use a media buyer.
If you like the idea of seeing your business on Netflix, we can take care of the whole thing. We’ll create the advert, make sure it meets the specifications, and bring in our media buying partners to plan the campaign, so get in touch and tell us what you have in mind.