Chris

"Market" and "Customers" are two entirely different things. You can't just go on the internets, google up a great big number, and then declare you've made your case.

Netflix may well have 60 million customers worldwide, but they are spread across many and diverse markets. Within the UK market, which is what we are discussing here, they had 3 million customers as of late last year. The average size of a UK household is 2.3, which implies an absolute maximum audience for Netflix of 6.9 million at any given time, assuming there is ever a time when every member of a subscribing household is sitting down and watching Netflix at the same time. This is extremely unlikely. Consider, for example, that the nearest the UK gets to all watching the same thing at the same time is whatever is on BBC One in the late afternoon or early evening on Christmas Day, and that attracts about 12-14 million.

Of course, you might reply, that's all besides the point because the whole point of a service like Netflix is that it doesn't rely on everyone watching at once. However, the advertising of mass-market consumer brands *does* rely on that. Big brands have big campaigns which run on a scale designed to get potential consumers talking about them. That is much more difficult to achieve if you can't reach a large audience, or you can't reach a large audience all at once. A 30 second slot in the ad break in the middle of Corrie is worth £50K to £100k for good reason.