Peter Naylor, a media-industry veteran who has held senior ad-sales roles at NBCUniversal, Snap and Hulu, is leaving Netflix after joining the company in 2022 as it launched its first foray into luring Madison Avenue to support its programs.
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“Peter’s enthusiasm, industry knowledge and relationships have been invaluable in getting our advertising business off the ground,” said Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix. “I want to thank him for all he has done to build our team, grow the business and position Netflix for success.”
Naylor is the second of two senior executives Netflix hired to run its ad-sales efforts to leave the company. He departs as many media companies still seem to be engaged in work for the industry’s annual “upfront,” when U.S. entertainment conglomerates try to sell the bulk of their ad inventory ahead of their next cycles of programming. Netflix and Amazon were believed to have run into some headwinds, as their entry into the market has brought with it a glut of new streaming inventory.
Jeremi Gorman, who previously came aboard Netflix from Snap to manage ad sales operations, left the streamer in October of last year. She was replaced by Reinhard, previously a vice president of studio operations for Netflix.
Naylor has been seen as the knowledgeable veteran who can navigate between the techies at Netflix and the monied marketers whose dollars they covet.
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Netflix has made strides in its ad-supported business that may require new expertise. Netfilix is expanding its ability to accept so-called “programmatic advertising,” or inventory that is sold via exchanges that hinge on specific types of audience data. The company announced in May that it would build an in-house ad-tech platform that will give advertisers new ways to buy commercials, measure their effectiveness and understand the audiences they reach. That would suggest that Netflix is moving away from its alliance with Microsoft, which has provided early ad-tech support. Netflix expects the new system to be available in most markets around the world by 2025 — the same time frame it has set for the company to gain the kind of scale with consumers that most advertisers expect.
Scale has been a challenge for Netflix in the recent past. Media buyers say the company’s U.S. subscriber base for its ad-supported tier s not yet large enough to warrant significant investment. As a result, these executives say, Netflix has seemed more open to offering concepts that match brands with programs or even weave them into the production or the streaming experience around a particular show.
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