Netflix claims 12 million French viewers a month and a premium CPM. Six days later, it cut its 2026 ad forecast. What that changes for a scale-up buying the screen.
On 14 October, Netflix held its first French Upfront at the Lido in Paris, in front of more than 300 advertisers and agencies, according to La Réclame. On stage, Florence Trouche, who runs Netflix's ad sales house in France, delivered the line the whole market remembered: "I hear that our CPM is premium. But our exposure is premium too." And a bolder one: the question is no longer whether to invest on Netflix, but how much. Six days later, on 20 October, Netflix published its quarterly results and cut its 2026 advertising revenue forecast from about 3 billion to about 2.7 billion dollars. Greg Peters, co-CEO, quoted by AFP: "We are currently a little behind our ambitious target for the year." The stock lost almost 6% after the close. My view: the two pieces of news belong together, and the second one should guide your buying. A seller who explains that his price is justified the same week he announces he is missing his sales target is a seller you negotiate with.
Netflix advertising: what the sales house is selling
The figures presented at the Lido, relayed by La Réclame and J'ai un pote dans la com. 12 million people reached every month in France by the ad-supported tier, according to Médiamétrie. Nearly 60% of new French subscribers pick the plan with ads, at 7.99 euros a month against 14.99 without. 30% of subscribers log in daily, for 1 hour 46 minutes on average. 18-34s make up more than a third of the ad audience, according to Netflix. On the effectiveness side, three studies: xpln.ai measures that a 20-second spot generates roughly twice the attention of a non-skippable online video; Ekimetrics attributes 7.20 euros of sales to every euro invested; Ipsos ranks Netflix as the first service people consult to choose a programme. The rest of the evening went to content partnerships, CUPRA with Nouvelle École, NYX with Wednesday, and the 2027 slate.
I am not disputing the screen. A non-skippable spot, full screen, inside a series people chose to watch, on the living-room television, is the best advertising context there is. I wrote the same thing about YouTube on the TV screen ten days ago. But 7.20 euros of sales per euro is a study commissioned by Netflix, presented by Netflix, on campaigns selected by Netflix. Like the 7.70 euros radio claims, which I discussed last week. It is not false. It is their number. And the market is starting to have numbers of its own.
What the market actually buys: 226 million gross and 376 advertisers
Kantar Media started monitoring advertising on Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ in the spring. Its first data, presented on 21 September and reported by CB News and J'ai un pote dans la com: 376 advertisers and 226 million euros gross invested across the three platforms between May and August 2026. Gross, meaning at rate card, before discounts. Net is far below, and Kantar does not give each platform's share. But the list of buyers is instructive. Banking and insurance is the leading sector, although it ranks only fifth on linear television. The top advertiser is Groupama, ahead of Procter & Gamble, The Magnum Ice Cream Company, Idealo and Trainline.
Look at the last two. Idealo and Trainline are not consumer-goods brands buying reach out of habit. They are digital companies, run on performance, that put SVOD in their top 5 of gross spend within the first months. I do not conclude that it works for them; I cannot see their dashboards. I conclude that buyers who count every euro judged the screen worth a test at scale. For a scale-up wondering whether Netflix is "for them", that is an answer. Meanwhile, WPP Media forecast in June, in its This Year Next Year report, connected TV up 24.7% in France in 2026, to 961 million euros, and linear television down 7.9%. The money is changing screens. The question is at what price.
The Netflix CPM against the other screens
Netflix does not publish a rate card. The orders of magnitude come from the market. At the launch of Prime Video Ads in April 2024, The Media Leader placed premium SVOD platforms between 25 and 35 euros CPM, the broadcasters' catch-up services, TF1+, 6play, france.tv, between 15 and 25 euros, YouTube between 5 and 10 euros, and recalled that Netflix had started around 50 euros before coming down. Journal du Net gave 22 to 36 euros for Prime Video at the same time. In the United States, MediaPost reported a Netflix CPM that fell from 65 dollars at launch in late 2022 to 20 to 30 dollars by summer 2024. Those figures are two years old. But the direction is clear: every time the inventory grows, the price drops. And the inventory is going to grow.
Set that against what I buy for my clients: digital out-of-home between 4 and 9 euros CPM, digital audio between 9 and 17, the broadcasters' catch-up on the living-room screen between 15 and 25. At 30 euros, a Netflix contact costs three to six times a DOOH contact. It may be worth three to six times more. But that has to be proven, campaign by campaign, and not with the sales house's study. For Sisley, we lifted ROAS by 45% across twelve markets without damaging the brand: a premium brand is no excuse for not counting. The only argument that justifies a premium CPM is incremental reach, the people you do not reach anywhere else. Netflix itself claims that 44% of subscribers exposed to an ad did not see it on television or on any other streaming service. That is the figure I ask to verify on my plan, not the 7.20 euros.
My rule for buying Netflix
I buy it like television, never like "digital": for incremental reach on a target that broadcaster TV and YouTube no longer give me, with a frequency cap written into the contract. I negotiate the CPM against the broadcasters' catch-up, not against the 2022 launch. I take the window when the seller is behind target, which is now. And I measure outside the sales house: brand searches, direct traffic, control areas or control audiences, and media mix modeling when the budget allows.
Why now is the time to negotiate
The seller is behind. A forecast lowered by 300 million dollars is no drama for a company with 12.87 billion dollars of quarterly revenue, up 11.8%. But it is a target the sales teams have to catch up in the fourth quarter and the first of 2027. The French sales house has every reason to be flexible on tests, welcome discounts and targeting, exactly as Amazon was at the launch of Prime Video, with a 50% bonus that brought the CPM to around 15 euros, according to The Media Leader at the time.
The inventory is opening up. Minted reports that advertisers will be able to activate their first-party data and third-party segments on Netflix via Kokai, The Trade Desk's platform, from November, on top of Yahoo DSP and Amazon DSP, and that Adform joins the list for Europe. A new pixel and a conversion API send back more than twenty event types. On 1 March 2027, nine more European countries open to advertising. More access routes, more countries, more measurement: this is a market normalising. A normalised market is paid at market price.
The competition for the screen is here. Nielsen measures that YouTube captures almost twice as much time as Netflix on American television sets. Prime Video launched in 2024 with an announced CPM of 22 to 36 euros and a maximum of 3 minutes 30 of advertising per hour. The broadcasters sell their catch-up between 15 and 25 euros with audiences measured by Médiamétrie for twenty years. Netflix is no longer alone in selling the living-room screen by the impression. That is why the Lido pitch leaned so hard on attention and the "Netflix Effect": when you can no longer sell scarcity, you sell quality. That is legitimate. It also costs less.
What I tell founders
If you spend less than 50,000 euros a month on media, Netflix is not your priority: the same money in addressable TV and CTV, DOOH and audio buys more contacts, and teaches you more. If you are above that, and your target is urban, under 45, and already saturated on Meta and YouTube, then yes, test it. One quarter, a test budget negotiated while the sales house chases its target, a frequency cap, two formats, including the Pause Ad, and one indicator that does not come from Netflix. If the incremental reach is there, you will have your answer. If it is not, you will have paid a premium CPM to reach people you were already reaching. To place Netflix in your plan and compare its cost per contact with the other screens, the media mix simulator gives a first split. And we can look together at whether your plan really needs this screen, during a free audit.
