They have to come clean about their viewership numbers

I told all of you for months and months that the streaming giant and advertising would not work because they would have to come clean about their viewership numbers.

It is one thing to make up numbers for press releases and the egos of filmmakers, but quite another when you are taking money based off viewers. The streamer is refunding 90% of the money taken from advertisers because they can’t meet the numbers promised.

If their shows were as popular as they said they are, do you think they would have to be refunding money?

Netflix

Netflix Forced To Refund Money Back to Advertisers After Lackluster First Month With Their Ad-Supported Tier: Report

It looks like Netflix‘s ad-supported tier is not bringing in the numbers the company thought it would. According to five agency executives, the streaming platform is now allowing advertisers to take back their money for advertisements that have not yet run, and the company’s stock has dropped nearly 10% as of today, per Digiday.

While Netflix CEO Reed Hastings initially shot down any chance of the streamer hosting ads, he had a change of tune when the company reported its first subscriber loss in over a decade last spring. As a way to presumably combat the loss, the company implemented an ad-supported tier last month, which costs $6.99 per month, as opposed to ad-free plan, which costs $9.99 per month.

However, the new feature seems to be having a slow start as the streaming platform, in some cases, has only delivered roughly 80% of the advertising audience they had expected, per Digiday.

“They can’t deliver. They don’t have enough inventory to deliver. So they’re literally giving the money back,” one agency executive told the outlet.

The company is using a “pay by delivery” structure, where advertisers only put up the money for viewers they reach, while anything unspent is given back to them at the end of the quarter, Digiday reports. Another agency executive added that advertisers were pushing to have the money back now so that they “could spend it in the critical holiday time period,” something Netflix agreed to do. – Source