Media & Advertising
Media and advertising companies continue to produce a wide distribution of customer experience outcomes, from the exceptional advocacy scores of Kaizen Gaming and Rossford Balloon & Fireworks Fest to the persistent challenges facing streamers like Max and Peacock. The sector's 81 disclosed scores reveal a landscape where business model and audience engagement matter more than scale.
The headline
The Media & Advertising sector delivers a median NPS of 69 across 81 canonical disclosures, sitting five points below the corpus median of 74. The arithmetic mean of 60.5 trails the median by 8.5 points, indicating a modest leftward skew driven by a handful of poor-performing properties, particularly in the streaming category. This distribution suggests that while many media and advertising businesses maintain solid customer relationships, a visible subset—often those dependent on subscription models or constrained content catalogues—struggle to inspire recommendation.
The spread is wide: eight companies report scores at or above 94, while eight others sit below 20. This bifurcation reflects fundamental differences in value delivery, content quality, and customer expectation management across a sector that spans everything from B2B marketing agencies to consumer entertainment platforms.
NPS evolution
Year-over-year performance has been volatile. The sector peaked in 2017 at a median of 86, then fell sharply to 46 in 2020—likely reflecting pandemic-driven service disruptions and the streaming wars' early churn dynamics—before recovering to the mid-70s in 2022–2023. Recent years show moderation: 2024's median of 46 rebounded to 76 in 2025, with 2026 tracking at 64 through mid-year across nine disclosures.
Disclosure volume
Disclosure activity remains modest but steady. After a low of four reports in 2017, volume expanded to a peak of twelve in 2024, then settled back to eleven in 2025. The current year is on track for nine disclosures, suggesting companies in this sector remain selective about public NPS transparency, particularly in contrast to SaaS or consumer hardware verticals.
Sub-sector view
The sector classification logic did not produce stable sub-buckets for this digest period, reflecting the heterogeneity of raw sector strings in the database. Manual inspection of the top raw sectors shows streaming media (median 35) lagging far behind marketing and advertising firms (median 74–75) and events and sports properties (median 82). This pattern underscores structural differences: marketing agencies serve smaller, often engaged client bases, while streaming platforms contend with commoditised content and high consumer expectations.
Company stories
Netflix's drift
Netflix offers the most instructive swing story in the dataset: its NPS fell 23 points from 46 in May 2020 to 23 in July 2025 across seven disclosures. This erosion coincides with the service's pivot to ad-supported tiers, password-sharing crackdowns, and intensified competition. While Netflix remains profitable, its declining advocacy suggests customers view the platform as increasingly transactional rather than essential.
High marks for niche engagement
Kaizen Gaming, a gaming and entertainment operator, posted a 94 in May 2026, drawn from volunteer program participants—a self-selected, highly engaged cohort. Similarly, Rossford Balloon & Fireworks Fest achieved 94 after its 2025 event, while USA Swimming recorded 94 in August 2025. These scores reflect the power of event-based, community-driven experiences that cultivate enthusiastic advocacy in ways subscription platforms rarely match.
Streaming's negative tail
Two companies sit below zero: BritBox at –46 in March 2020 and TwentyThree at –28 in September 2018. BritBox's score emerged during the early pandemic when library breadth and platform stability were under intense scrutiny. TwentyThree, a video marketing SaaS, appears to have faced onboarding or feature-gap issues in its disclosure period. Both scores point to the reputational cost of under-delivering in crowded, expectation-heavy categories.
Fresh in 2026
Recent disclosures show a mix of execution stories:
- LebTown scored 64 in June, pairing a solid NPS with 16% traffic growth—evidence that local news sites can build loyal audiences with consistent delivery.
- HBO Max doubled its NPS quarter-on-quarter to 12 in May, a meaningful improvement but still well below category leaders—suggesting the service is stabilising after integration turbulence.
- Tonies SE reported 77 in April, exceeding Apple and Amazon on brand engagement—a reminder that hardware-software bundles with strong emotional positioning can outperform tech giants in specific niches.
- WPP lifted its client NPS to 34.9 in March, reflecting the holding company's renewed focus on service integration and relationship quality.
- Granite, a creative media agency, hit 71 in March—well above the industry average and a testament to differentiated client service.
Older nuggets worth a second look
- Measure Marketing Results Inc. earned a perfect 100 in December 2017, reflecting commitment to high-quality service in digital marketing.
- Fractal Visuals also posted 100 in October 2017, named top Austin video production company for customer satisfaction.
- Ten Entertainment reported 66 in September 2017, demonstrating measurable customer experience improvements in its bowling and entertainment venues.
- Perceptive Group announced a +72 score in July 2017, positioning itself as New Zealand's most-loved marketing services firm.