Streaming Viewership
Netflix's Trade Desk Deal Won't Fix Its Tune-In Problem
Over the past few weeks in MediaPost, I have written that Netflix has a program tune-in problem, and that the most efficient fix is the one TV companies have used for decades: data-driven tune-in advertising. Last week Netflix opened its ad-supported inventory to buyers on The Trade Desk through the SP500+ marketplace, removing the private-deal requirement and the spend minimums that previously gated access. Inventory that was among the most exclusive in streaming is now buyable programmatically, across more than 250 million monthly ad-supported viewers.
The deal is a smart move and a familiar one. As I wrote earlier this month, CTV has collapsed the divide between digital and TV buying, and performance-focused buyers now expect to buy TV the way they buy Meta: self-serve, with no minimums, on systems they already know. Netflix just accepted those terms. Advertising is central to its future, and it will trade exclusivity for demand to get there.
But here is what the deal does not address. The business of media is the provisioning of consumer contact. It is that simple. Without consumer contact, you cannot sell ads regularly to companies that need to sell things every day. Open, programmatic access grows demand for the audience Netflix already has. It does not grow that audience, and much of Netflix viewing is still ad-free or ad-light, so the contact actually available to advertisers is a fraction of what the subscriber count suggests. On that, Netflix's own published data tells a harder story.
We analyzed every title in every "What We Watched" engagement report Netflix has published, from the first half of 2023 through the first half of 2026. Total viewing grew 4.5% over that stretch, from 93.5 billion hours to 97.7 billion, while the ad-supported tier scaled past 250 million monthly viewers and subscriptions kept climbing. More members and more buyers are sharing essentially the same pool of watched hours.
Across the 73 series where consecutive seasons could be compared on equal footing, 89% drew fewer views than the season before. The median series came back 28% smaller. Nearly one in five shows lost at least half its audience.
The premiere windows tell the same story. In Netflix's weekly global Top 10 data, on matched timeframes, Beef opened its second season down 58%. The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender opened down 59%. The Night Agent has declined at every return: 20.6 million views, then 13.9 million, then 8.4 million. Each of these series drew a large audience at its first premiere. The declines happen at the return, which is exactly the moment tune-in marketing exists to win.
This is not a programming problem. It is a tune-in problem. Netflix has signed up more subscribers than anyone in streaming, but it has never needed to bring viewers back to a specific show. Under subscriptions, it did not matter what people watched. Under advertising, it does. An advertiser pays for people watching, and every viewer who skips a returning season is lost revenue.
Simulmedia has run tune-in campaigns for years, for TV networks and streamers promoting their own programming. We find the people most likely to watch, reach them on linear TV at scale, and measure every viewer who converts. Netflix sells like TV now, and the rest of streaming is close behind. Growing an audience will take marketing like TV. That is our work.