• by Wayne Friedman , Today

After Netflix's upfront presentation earlier this week, one media analyst who conferred with its top ad executive estimated the streamer would have around a 45% "fill rate" -- advertising inventory slots that are sold -- for the remainder of 2025.

Dan Salmon, media analyst of New Street Research, modeled that the fill rate would then climb to around 70% in 2026 and 90% in 2027.

“At that point it slows to modest annual increases, eventually reaching 95% in 2030, which we would consider to be 'peak fill rate' as 100% is essentially impossible (and not always optimal, as extra inventory for things like make-goods is always helpful),” said Salmon.

Fill rates for premium CTV inventory can range from 60% to 100% at any given time for all sales platforms (including programmatic and direct sales).

Streamers that primarily use programmatic platforms for ad sales can range between a 30% to 60% fill rate, according to industry estimates.

Salmon projects there will be no change for Netflix’s ad load in programs, maintaining four to five minutes per hour of advertising inventory. “There is no reason to expect this to change until the fill rate begins approaching peak levels.”

During its upfront presentations, Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard said the company had seen growth to 94 million global average ad-supported monthly “profile” users. This means 170 million average monthly individual “viewers”/users, she said.

For Netflix (and other streamers), there can be many profiles for one individual account. From this and other server data, viewer/user numbers are calculated, which could be from profiles and non-profiles.

Salmon says the projection of 94 million to 170 million means a ratio of 1.8x (per single account).

This is a modest estimate by Netflix compared to competitors, he said.

For example, at its upfront presentation early in the week, Walt Disney said it had 164 million average monthly ad-supported viewers/users -- which is a 2.6x ratio -- coming from 60 million ad-supported accounts.

This week, Amazon said its Prime Video had 130 million monthly average viewers/users, but it was citing only U.S. advertising viewers.