Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is building a formidable advertising business, with its ad-supported tier now reaching more than 250 million monthly active viewers, up from 190 million last November.
Management expects advertising revenue to roughly double in 2026, reaching approximately $3 billion as the platform’s ad-supported audience continues to expand at a rapid pace.
The momentum is not expected to stop there, with analysts projecting Netflix’s advertising revenue will surpass $6 billion in 2027, representing another full doubling of the business.
Netflix’s ad-supported plan is also set to launch in 15 additional countries starting in 2027, opening up significant new inventory for the company to sell to advertisers globally.
Three factors underpin the bullish forecast: a growing viewer base, a broader international footprint, and ad revenue per viewer that still has considerable room to grow.
Netflix currently collects approximately one dollar per month in ad revenue per viewer, a figure that reflects how early-stage and underpenetrated its advertising operation remains relative to legacy media competitors.
The company defines a monthly active viewer as a member who watched at least one minute of ads in a given month, multiplied by the estimated number of people in that household, with the household estimate drawn from Netflix’s own internal research.
That definition matters, because it shifted over the past year and explains why the headline viewer growth figures can appear more dramatic than the underlying audience expansion actually was.
In May 2025, Netflix counted 94 million monthly active users based on individual profiles, and Amy Reinhard, the company’s president of advertising, said that figure translated to roughly 170 million viewers at the time.
Another full doubling of ad revenue in 2027 would add approximately $3 billion in new revenue, contributing around six percentage points of incremental growth on top of this year’s forecast base.
For a growth stock like Netflix, that distinction is meaningful, representing the difference between total revenue growth sliding toward single digits or holding firm in the low double digits.
What advertising cannot do, however, is carry the entire company, meaning subscription revenue and content investment will remain central pillars of the broader business strategy.
The advertising push represents a significant strategic pivot for Netflix, which resisted ad-supported tiers for years before launching the format and has since moved aggressively to scale it across global markets.
