Netflix whiffed today in its first-quarter earnings when it came to subscriber growth, missing the expectations it set at the beginning of the year for the..
Netflix whiffed today in its first-quarter earnings when it came to subscriber growth, missing the expectations it set at the beginning of the year for the first quarter.
Still, Netflix said it is expecting to add 600,000 domestic subscribers and 2.6 million international subscribers in the second quarter. That would bring it over the hump to get it past that 100 million mark that — again — may be some kind of signal of faith for the company as it looks to continue growing internationally amid heavy spend on content. The subscriber numbers are more or less the key part of Netflix’s business because it’ll determine whether or not it can level off the spend on content to grow and keep users around against the revenue it generates from those subscribers.
Getting that growth up is going to be even more important given the amount of money Netflix has to invest to get those subscribers to stick around and gather new ones. In addition to the costs of producing original content, Netflix also said it would spend $1 billion in marketing this year.
“As part of this, we are investing more in programmatic advertising with the aim of improving our ability to do individualized marketing at scale and to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time,” the company said in the earnings release.
