Future of TV Briefing: How Netflix is shaking up the upfront deal model

Netflix hosted a pre-upfront preview presentation at its Los Angeles studio on Tuesday for a select group of brand and agency executives. But that isn’t the only example of the company getting a jump on the annual TV and streaming ad marketplace.

Netflix has been increasingly signing single- and multi-year deals with key advertising accounts that extend beyond the scope of traditional upfront deals, according to agency executives with knowledge of the matter. That includes first-right-of-refusal before opportunities are made available to advertisers in the upfront market. A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment.

The deals more closely resemble the joint business plans that retailers sign with brands as part of retail media agreements, and in the context of the TV and streaming ad market, they put Netflix closer to the realm of tech participants Amazon and YouTube than typical TV and streaming ad sellers.

“They’re identifying these key accounts, I think, because they’re trying to get into the tech world. It’s not technically a JBP, but I think that’s where they’re going to go probably in 2027,” said one agency executive.

Call them JBP-lite or upfront-plus, these deals give participating advertisers early access to Netflix’s intellectual property for sponsorship opportunities, including product placement in programming. 

The deals are not entirely new for Netflix. “Sounds like a fancy way for describing what we’re already doing,” said a second agency executive when asked about these upfront-plus deals. The company began signing these longer-term, more comprehensive agreements with advertisers within a year or so of launching its advertising business in 2022.

“I saw this probably the first or second year that they were going to market. Now the scale of obviously the involvement of certain clients is changing, but this is probably their third year of evolving with clients direct deals,” said a third agency executive.

As Netflix has been bringing these deals to more advertisers, it has been focusing on those brands that placed early bets on the streaming service’s nascent advertising business. But it’s not necessarily giving those advertisers a friends-and-family discount. It has asked some advertisers to roughly double their annual ad spend thresholds on the platform in connection with these agreements, according to agency executives. 

Netflix has offset any sticker shock somewhat by offering these deals as so-called “endeavor” models. Under that model, an advertiser does not need to sign a fixed upfront spending commitment; instead the brand unlocks perks as it meets certain ad spend thresholds. This model is part of what makes Netflix’s deals more closely resemble that of the tech giants than of the traditional TV companies.

To that end, Netflix has also been teasing tech and innovation perks as part of these deals, though agency execs said they hadn’t yet been informed what exactly those perks will be. The execs do know what they’d like those perks to be, though. For example, the likes of Amazon and YouTube/Google offer ad credits as part of their deals with upfront-style deals with advertisers; Netflix does not – yet.

“Having some type of credit model within that JBP cycle is really helpful. Anything that incentivizes clients to be a repeat user, whether it’s within a year or two years, is something that I think is really smart. Clients really dig value,” said the third agency executive.

What we’ve heard

“RPMs were down for us. We did get the sense… that Facebook was falling out of love with content aggregators.”

— Former employee at LADbible Group, which has laid off members of its social video team

Numbers to know

29%: Percentage share of ad-supported TV viewing that went to sports programming among 25- to 54-year-olds in Q4 2025.

>$3 billion: How much Paramount may pay per year to renew its deal to air NFL games.

$4.99: New monthly fee for Amazon Prime Video’s ad-free tier.

$600M: How much Netflix may end up paying for Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking company.

24: Number of hours that CBS News 24/7 staffers’ walkout that started on Tuesday was slated to last.

10: Number of minutes at the start of World Cup matches this year that broadcasters will be able to simulcast on YouTube.

$10 billion: The U.S. government’s payout for brokering the deal with China and ByteDance for TikTok U.S.

>$550 million: Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s payout for landing the sale to Paramount.

What we’ve covered

A new studio is betting Hollywood talent and first-party data will reshape creator monetization:

• Linden Lane Films is one company, among others, pairing Hollywood talent with top creators and building the ad-tech data layer beneath them to compete for brand budgets that have historically gone to premium publishers and platforms like YouTube.
• Its model includes an independent film studio, a creator incubator called Linden Lane Labs (where the Stoke Twins, Azelart, and more will develop original, long-form IP), and a proprietary data layer built by Tracer Labs and its digital identity platform Trust ID.

Read more about Linden Lane Films here.

Middle-tier creators are fueling the next phase of the creator economy:

• The top 10 percent of creators earned 62% of total payment in 2025, per CreatorIQ.
• Nearly half of all creators surveyed by The Influencer Marketing Factory are making less than $10,000 a year for their content creation, while 45.6 percent make between $10,000 and $100,000.

Read more about mid-tier creators here.

Ritual Labs builds AI model for earlier creative development:

• Last week, production company Ritual launched Ritual Labs, an AI-powered creative technology venture that allows brands to pre-visualize campaigns before committing production dollars.
• The company projects a 30 to 50% cost savings for clients in the pilot program, but did not offer specific dollar figures.

Read more about AI creative tools here.

How medical creator Nick Norwitz grew his Substack paid subscribers from 900 to 5,200 within 8 months:

• Nick Norwitz graduated from Harvard Medical School last May. By January, he had already grown his paying Substack subscribers nearly 500 percent, taking the total to 5,200.
• The mechanism was straightforward: every YouTube video became a signpost, directing his 870,000 subscribers toward a Substack where the deeper analysis lived behind a paywall.

Read more about creator monetization strategies here.

Layoffs hit LADbible Group’s social video team:

• LADbible Group is cutting approximately a dozen staffers on its social video team based in Manchester, in the U.K.
• Growth driven by shareable, user-generated content — often the bulk of LADbible Group’s presence on Facebook and TikTok — may be slowing.

Read more about LADbible Group’s layoffs here.

What we’re reading

Nielsen’s new math:

The measurement provider has postponed its monthly The Gauge report after a methodology update resulted in watch time declines for streaming services, according to Variety.

NFL’s Thanksgiving expansion:

The league may add a Thanksgiving Eve game to its schedule this season as existing rights holders weigh how to trim budgets to afford higher fees to air games, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Paramount+BET+:

Paramount will fold BET+ into Paramount+ in June after buying out Tyler Perry’s stake in the standalone streamer, according to The Wrap.

Vertical video everywhere:

Disney’s Disney+ and NBCUniversal’s Peacock are each adding vertical video feeds to their respective streaming services’ mobile apps. Meanwhile, Google has formed a new program with Range Media Partners to produce microdramas for the Google TV mobile app for Android phones among other platforms.

Disney’s new entertainment org:

With Josh D’Amaro officially taking the helm as CEO this week, newly named chief creative officer Dana Walden has updated the leadership team of her organization, which now includes the company’s games and digital entertainment division, according to Deadline.