Netflix Hires Snap Execs Jeremi Gorman And Peter Naylor To Lead Its Push Into Advertising

Dade Hayes
·3 min read

As it gets set for one of the biggest pivots in its eventful quarter-century of existence as a company — the launch of an ad-supported subscription tier next year — Netflix has turned to two seasoned digital execs to oversee it.

Jeremi Gorman and Peter Naylor, both most recently with Snap Inc., will join Netflix next month. Gorman was chief business officer and head of ads at Snap, and Naylor was VP Ad Sales. At Netflix, Gorman’s title will be president of worldwide advertising and Naylor will be VP Advertising Sales.

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The company confirmed the hires to Deadline after they had been reported by tech outlet The Verge.

Netflix said last spring it would finally do what investors and others had long expected and offer a cheaper subscription tier with ads. It hastily announced the move as it reported its first year-to-year decline in subscribers in more than a decade, though it continues to pace the field with 220.7 million paying customers. After having the streaming field virtually to itself for more than a decade, Netflix now faces stiff competition in the U.S. and other parts of the world from Disney+, HBO Max and several other recently launched services. Disney has announced it will add an ad-supported tier of Disney+ in December.

Gorman had lengthy stints at Amazon and Yahoo before moving to Snap in 2018. Prior to his arrival at Snap in 2020, Naylor had made his mark in streaming by overseeing sales at Hulu, guiding it past the $1 billion mark in annual revenue when it was still a joint venture among several media companies. Before Hulu, he spent seven years at NBCUniversal.

The execs’ exit from Snap comes amid reports the company is eyeing layoffs of 20% of its workforce due to a slowdown in growth and worsening economic conditions.

“I am excited to welcome Jeremi Gorman as our President, Worldwide Advertising, and Peter Naylor as our Vice President, Advertising Sales, to Netflix. Jeremi’s deep experience in running ad businesses and Peter’s background in leading ad sales teams together will be key as we expand membership options for consumers through a new ad-supported offering,” Netflix COO Greg Peters said in a statement provided to Deadline.

Gorman said she was “thrilled to be joining Netflix to help build the advertising business and a world-class advertising team from the ground up. We’re just at the beginning, but look forward to delivering the best experiences for Netflix members and the advertising community, of which I have proudly been a part for over 20 years.” 

Naylor added, “It has been great to see the excitement amongst the advertiser community about Netflix’s upcoming ads-supported offering. I’m excited to be joining the team and look forward to helping our advertisers connect with Netflix members around the world.”

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