Netflix beat Wall Street’s expectations again in Q2 2024, adding eight million global paid subscriptions and increasing its revenue by 17% to US$9.6 billion.

According to the quarterly financial report it released yesterday, this brings Netflix’s worldwide paid memberships to 278 million. And it might be one of the last times this info is shared by the streamer, which announced last quarter that it will stop reporting subscriber totals and average revenue per user beginning in 2025—opting to focus instead on overall revenue and operating margin as its primary financial metrics, as well as tracking engagement (time spent by viewers on the platform).

Netflix’s ad tier membership grew by 34% between Q1 and Q2, putting the company  “on track to achieve critical ad subscriber scale for advertisers in 2025,” according to a shareholders letter that also noted the importance of a new in-house ad tech platform that will be tested in Canada later this year and more widely in 2025.

Interestingly, Netflix also revealed that VP of ad sales Peter Naylor is exiting the company that he joined in August 2022. The streamer is looking to hire an ad sales chief for the US and Canada in lieu of filling Naylor’s more globally-focused position.

Netflix said that “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. The near-term challenge (and medium-term opportunity) is that we’re scaling faster than our ability to monetize our growing ad inventory.”

Elsewhere in its report, the company stressed that it won’t bundle its service with a streaming competitor like Disney+ or Max because Netflix “already operates as a go-to destination for entertainment, thanks to the breadth and variety of our slate and superior product experience.”

It also cited Nielsen’s The Gauge, which has reported that streaming currently accounts for 40% of total TV watch time in the US, with top performer YouTube taking a 9.9% share of the streaming pie, and Netflix close behind at 8.4%.

“The challenge for so many of our competitors is that while they are investing heavily in premium content, it’s generating relatively small viewing on their streaming services, and linear continues to decline,” the company noted. 

Looking ahead, “our biggest opportunity is winning a larger share of the 80%+ of TV time (primarily linear and streaming) that neither Netflix nor YouTube has today.”

Co-CEO Greg Peters also stated in the company’s earnings call that shows like Stranger Things and Wednesday wouldn’t work if they had been produced by YouTube. “It’s really hard to imagine how that kind of big creative bet would happen, would be possible, within YouTube’s model.”