Netflix cuts its 2026 ad revenue target to $2.7bn.
Netflix now expects about $2.7bn in advertising revenue this year, down from the roughly $3bn it set in January and repeated through the year. It blamed a slower than planned rollout of some ad products and partner integrations.
The new figure came with third-quarter results on 20 October. Revenue for the quarter was $12.9bn, up 12% year on year, and Netflix kept full-year revenue guidance at $51.1bn, up 13%. The $3bn target, first given with its fourth-quarter 2025 results in January, would have roughly doubled ad revenue on 2025. Co-CEO Greg Peters told analysts the company had seen delays with some new ad products and partner integrations, and called the lower number a modest short-term hit worth taking for a better long-term position.
On the same day Netflix set out what those products are. Nicolle Pangis, its VP of advertising for the US and Canada, said an enhanced Conversion API and a new Netflix Pixel let advertisers bring in more than 20 lower-funnel conversion events, opening up conversion lift studies, attribution, A/B tests and audiences built from conversion data. Audience targeting through Yahoo DSP and Amazon DSP has been live since March; activation of third-party and first-party audiences through The Trade Desk starts next month, with in-DSP measurement there to follow. The ads plan also expands to 15 more countries next year. Netflix has named 11 of them for March 2027: Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland.
Netflix did not say which capabilities slipped, and the remaining four new ad markets are unnamed. None of the named markets is in the Middle East.
For buyers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Netflix's ad tier is still not something they can plan into a local schedule. The useful signal is the direction: Netflix is building performance tools such as a pixel and conversion API, so when ads do reach new markets, expect them to be sold on outcomes as well as reach.
Why it matters
The biggest streamer is admitting its ad build is slower than promised, while pushing hard into performance measurement that will shape how its ads are sold everywhere.
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