Netflix is substituting a new metric for advertising reach, the monthly active viewer, or MAV, which quantifies the number of viewers gathering around the screen. This replaces the monthly active user (MAU) measurement, which measures by account, something Netflix feels is less accurate for the purpose of media buyers. “Our move to viewers means we can give a more comprehensive count of how many people are actually on the couch,” including friends and family, says Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard. The streamer is also experimenting with dynamic ad templates that use mix-and-match creative elements based on viewer behaviors.

“Today, ads on Netflix reach more than 190 million monthly active viewers globally” on the company’s ad-supported tier, Reinhard explains in a news post. That’s just about double the 94 million MAUs the company’s ads reached in May.

“The switch to members of a household, instead of just an account, will clearly boost the audience numbers Netflix touts to potential sponsors — though it remains to be seen how much credence Madison Avenue will grant the new metric,” Variety writes.

“Just as there is no universal streaming viewing metric, there is also no industry standard for measuring the overall reach of ads in streaming,” Reinhard adds. “Now that we have the building blocks of our business in place, we decided it’s the best time to reassess how we measure our ads reach.”

“Netflix defines monthly active viewers as ‘members who have watched at least one minute of ads on Netflix per month multiplied by the estimated average number of people within a household,’ a figure derived from Netflix’s own research,” Variety explains.

“Whether it changes how budgets move is another matter,” writes Digiday, emphasizing that “many advertisers still transact on impressions and guaranteed delivery, but the metric strengthens Netflix’s case in planning conversations and helps reassure advertisers who are looking for signs that Netflix’s ad tier is maturing into a stable, measurable business.”

“We always knew that monthly active users was a conservative representation of our reach, because Netflix viewing is oftentimes a very communal experience,” Netflix VP of Finance and Strategy Mitzi Reaugh tells Digiday, calling MAV “a more complete metric, one that really reflects the scale of our ads business.”

As for the interactive ads, encouraged by early results in the U.S. and Canada, Netflix says it “will roll these out globally by Q2 2026,” according to Reinhard.

Related:
Netflix Ditches MAUs; Streaming into Trouble, AdExchanger, 11/6/25
Netflix Moves to New Ad Metric as Platform Hits 4 Million Australian Users, Variety, 11/6/25