I'm going to paint you a picture of my thoughts on our dystopian future and certain trends I've noticed. 90% of US households subscribe to at least one streaming video provider. Over 25 million young adults (approximately 33%) under 35 are now living with their parents. Approximately 64% of US homeowners report a stronger desire to stay at home than before the pandemic, a trend fueled by increased expenses and a move toward in-home leisure. People with huge families cannot afford to be outside. Financial pressures: Children spend their entire lives being acquainted with this lifestyle, which involves cost-cutting and changing consumer budgets. Remote work and employment have grown dramatically since the outbreak.
Investors are quick to point out competition is fierce with all the streaming platforms trying to take the playbook from Netflix but funny enough we’ve seen a slow acquisition of the film industry with Disney acquiring Hulu, paramount acquiring WBD and now owning HBO subscription platform now being imported over to Paramount, etc your starting to see the lineup unfolding of 3 major players Prime Video, Paramount, Disney+ with this smaller and smaller ownership less platforms to subscribe to for streaming content into the top 4 today. Another thing that is also very bad for consumers is the fact that Building a streaming service Very difficult and Requires tech, licensing, apps, payment systems, customer support and constant content, And then, after all that, it’s even harder to get new subscribers – and keep them. These monopolies will soon be able to control all of the prices as they grow and produce their own hit shows/movies and buyout the rights to thousands of existing popular TV shows and movies.
Netflix has the Global appeal, they’ll be a bigger differentiator to rivals like Amazon, Paramount and Disney and it won’t matter how good they are in the US. If their movies/shows are a huge hit globally and one of their main competitors paramount is already financially strapped to a huge chunk of debt with a chunk of old content meanwhile Netflix gets to laugh off to the bank.
Netflix has curated more foreign Tv shows than any legacy media company. Local originals that travel globally (the “Squid Game” model) plus AI‑assisted dubbing, subtitling, and localization can deepen moats in those regions and make ARPU expansion easier over time. which is hard to do at scale. AI is already helping with pre-production, editing, visual effects (VFX), marketing, and localization: Translate and dub films into many languages more quickly, with improved lip synchronization, which will help Netflix’s strategy.
We now have a relatively new part of both Amazon and Netflix business model is
ad revenue.
Global Video Ad Revenue Today
Netflix: $1.5B
Amazon: $3.0B
2026 Ad Revenue Targets
Netflix: $3.0B
Amazon: $4.0B+
Netflix is targeting $9 billion in annual advertising revenue by 2030
Netflix has announced that it will expand the ad platform to the following countries during 2026:
United Kingdom
Germany
France
Italy
Spain
Australia
Japan
South Korea
Mexico
Brazil
advertising is becoming a second major revenue engine for Netflix alongside subscriptions. Management has said it expects advertising revenue to grow significantly over the next several years, and owning the ad platform should improve margins over time. The ad-supported plan represents roughly 60% of new sign-ups in countries where it is available.
Everything investors complain about with Netflix is easily fixable — management is likely experimenting with cheaper content or different content mixes. I also believe many investors hold the opinion that there’s “no content” on the platform, when in reality, they’re just consuming content faster than Netflix can produce it. That’s why Netflix has started diversifying its lineup with short-form videos, documenta