Netflix CEO promises no ads. Making money in the advertising world is not easy.

Recently, Netflix, the world's largest streaming platform, released its fourth-quarter financial report, which showed that Netflix's revenue was US$5.47 billion, a year-on-year increase of 30.6%; Netflix's net profit was US$587 million, a year-on-year increase of 338.1%. The number of paid subscribers in the United States increased by 550,000, and the number of paid subscribers internationally increased by 8.3 million.

After the earnings report was released, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings attended the earnings conference and answered questions from analysts. During the conference, analysts asked about Netflix's advertising strategy, and Reed Hastings emphasized that Netflix does not consider placing advertisements for users.

As for the reason, the CEO explained that Google, Facebook and Amazon are all very powerful in online advertising, and it is very challenging to take away the $5-10 billion advertising market from them. In the long run, it is not easy to make money in this field. In addition, not placing advertisements also means that Netflix will not collect users' personal data, thus eliminating privacy disputes and simplifying the workload.

Previously, analysts at Nomura Securities estimated that if Netflix decided to run advertisements, it could immediately increase its annual revenue by $1 billion. It must be said that Netflix is ​​indeed very courageous to give up such a large piece of revenue.