In its Q1 2024 letter to shareholders released last month, Netflix announced that its quarterly earnings reports will look a little bit different next year. Starting in Q1 2025, it will no longer report quarterly membership numbers and average revenue per membership—a decision, the company said in the letter, that is partly the result of its increasingly global business, which features a variety of price points in the different countries that Netflix operates in.

The move is perhaps indicative of the increasingly global reality for many streamers on the market. Later this month, Warner Bros. Discovery will roll out Max in Europe, for instance (earlier this year, it became available in Latin America and the Caribbean as well); other streamers, like Disney+ and Paramount+, are already available in many international markets.

As streamers continue looking abroad for more growth at the same time that they bolster their ad-supported tiers, some agency execs are anticipating a benefit to the ad-buying process, particularly for large, international advertisers. However, there are still kinks that will need to be worked out if it is to go smoothly.

“While a lot of the conversations within the video upfronts have been heavily rooted in US investment from advertisers or marketers,” Jake Marx, global head of partnerships at Stagwell Media Network, told Marketing Brew, “this is now going to be an opportunity to expand some of the video upfront conversations to be on a global level.”

Continue reading here.—JS

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NBCUniversal kicked off its upfront bonanza for advertisers with a familiar refrain—literally.

A symphony orchestra, rising from the floor of Radio City Music Hall, promptly banged out the opening notes of Law & Order: SVU along with other iconic theme songs to officially mark the start of upfronts week.

In a nearly two-hour marathon pitch interspersed with all the trailers, teasers, executives, and Jimmy Fallon that ad buyers may have come to expect, executives regularly reminded attendees that NBCU is a 21st-century company with the best of streaming and linear television.

“We now have the data and insights of our digitally native competitors,” Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, told the crowd. “We have the beloved talent, brands and intellectual properties of the iconic entertainment companies, and we have the reach and scale of social media platforms…we’re the only ones that have it in one place.”

This year saw the peacock’s pitch back in true form, free from the shadow of last year’s writers’ strike and the C-suite controversy that overshadowed last year’s presentation. Last year, former ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino abruptly departed the company days before the upfronts show to take over as CEO of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

At this year’s show, though, she wasn’t forgotten.“NBC is launching a new adventure competition series called Destination X, or as it was originally titled, The Linda Yaccarino Story,” joked late-night host Seth Meyers, to audible groans. And Mark Marshall, chairman of NBCU global advertising and partnerships, who along with Lazarus replaced Yaccarino’s onstage role last year, quipped that he was surprised to be “renewed for season two.”

Read more here.—RB

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Michele Morelli is SVP of marketing and communications at Foursquare. Prior to Foursquare, she served in marketing and communications roles at AOL, Oath, and Toluna Corporate.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? My favorite example of effective advertising isn’t actually a campaign; it’s a 2015 Geico commercial. Back when YouTube initially launched, users couldn’t skip ads, so when the announcement came that users would soon have the option to skip after five seconds, it sent ripples through the advertising industry. Many creatives and media agencies were concerned about how to capture viewers’ attention without the guaranteed “eyeball time.” What made the Geico commercial stand out was its direct approach to this change. It embraced the shift head-on and became a part of the cultural conversation. The ad acknowledged the upcoming skip option by saying, “You can’t skip this ad because it’s already over,” before launching into a scene where a dog takes over a family dinner party. It was engaging, funny, and cleverly used the limitations of the platform to its advantage.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’m obsessive about consumer privacy and personal data collection.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? In a surprise to no one, I’m feeling most optimistic about all the benefits AI and LLMs—like OpenAI's GPT-3—offer. I see a broad range of capabilities that can significantly benefit marketing organizations. To be fair, AI has been used by organizations and frankly, in marketing, for years, but it’s the acceleration of the user-friendly interface that can interpret and act on simple language that has really captured imaginations. The most obvious and exciting uses for current AI include personalized content creation, predictive analytics, and ad targeting and optimization.

As for the trend I’m least excited about, anything where there is essentially a monopoly—or large corporations overindexing their share of the market. I see monopolistic competition as something that can stifle innovation and impend the natural acceleration of technological evolution.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Dick’s Sporting Goods and the WNBA collaborated on a line of lifestyle apparel for girls.
• T-Mobile is working with PGA of America, CBS Sports, and Sony to highlight the telco’s 5G offerings.
• R/GA combined its US and Latin American operations; April Quinn, the agency’s former US president, will serve as president of the Americas.