Netflix ads president Amy Reinhard on building a proprietary ad stack, vertical video, and advertiser strategy

Netflix Ads: Amy Reinhard on Building the Ad Business

Amy Reinhard, Netflix's president of advertising, runs the company's global ads business at a moment when the ad-supported tier is still taking shape. The central challenge isn't technology — it's the organizational and commercial infrastructure Netflix never needed before.

Organizational learning over technical learning

Netflix came into advertising with deep machine learning and data infrastructure, but without a sales team. Reinhard is direct that the harder lessons have been relational and commercial, not technical. Building a sales organization from scratch inside a company that has never had one is the real adjustment. The technology cycle of testing, iterating, and pivoting came naturally. Managing advertiser relationships did not.

“We made the decision about eighteen months ago to lean into building our own tech stack. And we launched that a year ago. We just announced our upfront yesterday that we're expanding that ad tier into 15 more countries around the world. As we roll out this vertical video content, we are going to be offering that to advertisers along with our todoom.com coverage in 2027.”

Advertiser strategy

Netflix targets the top 400 enterprise advertisers and frames the opportunity as B2C rather than B2B, at least for now. On the spectrum of ad buyers, some want contextual association with specific titles — McDonald's alongside K-Pop Demon Hunters, or brands tied to Stranger Things — while others are more receptive to audience-behavior and mood-based targeting across the full content slate.

The K-Pop Demon Hunters example is instructive. Netflix didn't know it had a hit until roughly 60 days after launch, which means contextual deals on that title were impossible to construct in advance. The pitch to advertisers, then, is that reach across a broad and unpredictable content slate often outperforms waiting for the next obvious tentpole.

Ad load and member experience

Reinhard frames member experience as the primary constraint on ad product decisions — lower ad loads, lower frequency, and non-intrusive placement. On content editing for ad breaks, Netflix works with what creators give them. Shonda Rhimes, trained in broadcast, already writes with natural break points in mind. Writers who don't are accommodated too; Netflix identifies breaks algorithmically to avoid cutting mid-sentence or mid-action.

Vertical video and the 2027 timeline

Netflix announced at its upfront the previous day that vertical video inventory — tied to the Clips tab rollout — will be made available to advertisers in 2027. Reinhard treats this as a meaningful expansion of the ad product, particularly on mobile.

What's not on the roadmap

In-game advertising isn't a near-term priority. Reinhard says the roadmap for the next two to three years is already full with foundational and innovative priorities, but won't rule out games advertising as engagement in that category grows.

The measurement and signal question — closing the loop between passive TV viewing and trackable mobile interactions — is still being worked out. Reinhard flags privacy as the governing constraint and signals more product development to come, without specifying timelines.