Peter Naylor, Netflix’s vice president of ad sales, is leaving the company.
Naylor has been at Netflix since August 2022. The company will be hiring a head of U.S. and Canada ad sales to replace Naylor’s position, which was a more global role.
“Peter’s enthusiasm, industry knowledge and relationships have been invaluable in getting our advertising business off the ground. I want to thank him for all he has done to build our team, grow the business and position Netflix for success,” said Amy Reinhard, Netflix president of advertising.
Netflix’s advertising business has been in place for 18 months, and has been growing, with the company seeing its ad-tier plan membership grow 34 percent this quarter compared to the last quarter. It now accounts for 45 percent of all Netflix signups in markets with the advertising tier.
Netflix is also building an in-house ad tech platform that it plans to test in Canada in 2024 and then launch elsewhere in 2025.
The company believes it is on track to achieve critical scale for advertisers in countries with the advertising offering by 2025.
The news of Naylor’s departure comes as Netflix announced its second quarter earnings Tuesday, reporting an addition of 8 million subscribers to bring its total number to 277 million global subscribers. The company reported revenue of $9.56 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago, and operating income of $2.6 billion, compared to $1.8 billion.
“Our ad revenue is growing nicely and is becoming a more meaningful contributor to our business. But building a business from scratch takes time — and coupled with the large size of our subscription revenue — we don’t expect advertising to be a primary driver of our revenue growth in 2024 or 2025,” Netflix said in its press release.