Netflix Plans an Upfront to Pitch Its Ad Offerings
Published: 2024-02-20 14:25:00

For all the naysayers who claimed Netflix would never truly move into the Upfront space away from the streaming-focused NewFronts, it’s time to rethink your stance. Now, just over a year after it first ventured into the ad market, Netflix is planning its  first-ever in-person Upfront event. Our industry-leading [entertainment attorney](https://www.filmtvlaw.com/), Brandon Blake of Blake & Wang P.A. unpacks what this could mean for the wider evolution of the Upfronts event, as we see more streamers than ever ‘go mainstream’ and join the fight for boosted ad spending.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/klcozt2320xyzk59f9gr.jpg)

[Brandon Blake](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2404120/)

## The 2024 Upfronts

Just in time for spring, major players in the TV advertising and wider broadcast space will once again take to stages across New York in a bid to lure ad sellers and buyers to their services. For an institution that had its origins in the black-and-white TV era, the Upfronts continue to be as pivotal in the ad inventory space as ever. This year, most Upfront presentations will be taking place in the second full calendar week of May. 

Netflix will be pitting itself directly against rival streamer, YouTube TV, with another May 15 presentation. Known as a ‘first look’, this event will be hosted by senior executives and give interested ad inventory buyers a key look at Netflix’s planned content for the year ahead. On May 16, after the focused presentation, Netflix will also be running a set of interactive activations, collectively dubbed ‘The Netflix Experience’, which will be open to all interested advertisers at their Pier59 Studios home. 

## Changed Plans

It’s good to finally see Netflix take their Upfronts presentation live and in person. Initially, they intended to run a similar live event at the Paris Theatre last year. Fitting, as they now operate it. However, this plan was overshadowed by the wider labor unrest in the industry leading up to the 2023 Upfronts, and Netflix shifted to a virtual-only event setup. 

Traditionally, the middle week of May has been the home of traditional and legacy studios like Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal. Paramount’s parent company, CBS, was a notorious player in this scene, typically hosting a Carnegie Hall gathering and wealth of after-parties.

However, with Paramount shifting to a different, more targeted model for its ‘Upfront’ presentation, and the incursion of streaming-born services like Netflix and YouTube into the space, we’re looking at a rapidly evolving advertising landscape. Their new digital activation ties into their growing efforts to pitch events connected to top originals on the service like Stranger Things and Bridgerton. Reportedly, other verticals will include their Netflix Bites and Netflix is a Joke sub-brand, covering food and comedy-focused programming respectively.

Netflix, while long eschewing advertising on their service, moved into an ad-supported budget subscription tier in November 2022. With just over a year since launch, this tier now carries more than 23 million active monthly users and has played a major role in reversing the streamer’s declining subscription rates. Where to from here for their advertising efforts? We guess we will have to wait for their Upfronts pitch to find out!