As someone who hated the commercials on TV, nothing felt more zen than my Netflix disc-by-mail subscription in about 2005. Not only weren’t there any ads in the content (because it was on DVDs); there wasn’t any ad text anywhere, or even any artwork on the paper sleeves. It was pure cinema.
Those days are gone. There aren’t any DVDs, and Netflix’s ad business is responsible for a rapidly growing share of its revenue. If Netflix’s own claims are to be believed, its with-ads tier is seen by 250 million viewers per month. By my math, that’s about 3% of humanity, all within the 12 mostly affluent countries where Netflix serves ads, soon to be expanded to 27.
Netflix also claimed around this time last year that ad-supported Netflix was reaching 94 million people—a more-than-doubling of claimed viewership. And 2025’s number was more than double its claimed viewership from May of 2024. That would mean viewership with ads is absolutely ballooning year by year.
To throw at least a bit of cold water on Netflix’s claims, Deadline wrote earlier this year that the ad-supported Netflix tier had only grown 14% year-over-year according to the research firm Digital i. That’s a huge discrepancy. To account for at least some of that difference, note that Netflix is basing its reports—which are geared toward prospective advertisers—on the number of viewers, not subscribers.
That Digital i report also said only 40% of active Netflix subscriptions are ad-supported, which is important to keep in mind too. Netflix is not yet making nearly as much from advertisers as it is from subscriber fees. According to a story last year in the Wall Street Journal, Netflix expected to make $2.15 billion from ad revenue last year, compared to about $45 billion in total revenue for 2025—less than 5%.
So when you watch Netflix with ads, remember that every hour you’re staring at that screen, you’re seeing up to five minutes of ads—up to about 8% of your viewing time. That’s the amount of your life you’re giving up for something that makes Netflix only 5% of its revenue.
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