If you buy CTV, you have probably scrolled past the phrase “local originals” in a platform deck and moved on. Don’t. As PPC Land explains in a detailed primer, local originals are the mechanism that turns global streaming reach into inventory you can actually sell against a national audience.
What a local original actually is
A local original is a series, film or unscripted format commissioned for one national market, in that market’s language, with local writers, cast and production companies. That’s the opposite of a global original, which is made once and dropped everywhere on the same day.
Amazon capitalises the term and staffs against it, with dedicated local originals leads for Prime Video Canada, Nigeria and Asia-Pacific. Netflix calls the same thing local-language or international originals. Disney and European broadcasters say local content. Same object, different label.
The commercial logic is simple: once you operate in 190-plus countries, catalogue size stops being a differentiator. The next subscriber in Jakarta or Bogota is won by something that looks like Jakarta or Bogota, not by another English-language franchise.
The numbers have already tipped
Ampere Analysis found that 52% of Netflix original TV seasons released in 2025 were non-English — the first year above parity, up from 49% in 2024. Spanish accounted for 21% of new seasons; Korean climbed from 12% to 20% of non-English releases. Films remain more English-weighted at 44%.
Budgets follow. Netflix committed $2.5 billion to South Korean content over four years back in April 2023, double what it had spent there since 2016. Prime Video announced a $2 billion Latin American commitment through 2030, promising to more than double Local Originals across Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Chile, with over 25 new titles in 2027 alone.
Why advertisers should care
Local commissioning is what gives an ad-supported tier cultural adjacency on top of raw reach. A platform selling only global franchises gives you eyeballs. One commissioning locally gives you eyeballs plus context.
The scale is now real: Prime Video reached 315 million average ad-supported viewers by Q4 2025 after launching ads in the US in January 2024 and adding eight more markets that year. Netflix reported more than 250 million monthly active users on its ad plan, with programmatic buying approaching half of non-live inventory in 2026.
And attention follows local. TiVo’s Q4 2025 report put local content at close to 30% of total viewing time, up around five percentage points year on year — well above what its marketing budgets would suggest.
The targeting layer has caught up too. Amazon extended zip code-level creative variation on Prime Video to Canada, Mexico and Brazil on 21 July 2026, nine months after the US launch. Local programming plus postcode-level creative is a genuinely new planning unit.
The regulation shaping the supply
Article 13 of the EU’s amended Audiovisual Media Services Directive requires on-demand services to hold at least a 30% share of European works and give them prominence. France went further with its SMAD decree of 22 June 2021, forcing qualifying services to put 20% to 25% of French turnover into French and European production. Netflix later undertook to raise French-language investment to 85% and independent works to 68% by 2026.
Canada went the other way. The CRTC raised its streaming contribution to 15% on 21 May 2026, the government ordered a reconsideration on 3 June, and by 17 July the Attorney General told the Federal Court of Appeal the base contribution would be scrapped.
What to do with this
- Treat local slates as a media plan variable, not a content footnote — they signal where nationally saleable inventory is expanding.
- Assume reversibility. Amazon stopped commissioning originals in Africa and the Middle East in January 2024 within a single planning cycle. Slates can vanish, and inventory goes with them.
- Don’t confuse quota compliance with attention. European Audiovisual Observatory research across nine markets found under 0.1% of works drove roughly 14% of viewing time. Title-count quotas can be met with titles nobody watches.
- Watch broadcaster tie-ups. TF1 put its live channels inside the Netflix interface in France on 19 June 2026 while keeping control of its own ad inventory.
- Push for market-level reporting. Platforms don’t break out ad revenue by country, so validate reach claims with your own measurement.
The one-line summary: content is commissioned nationally, but the inventory is sold internationally. Plan accordingly.
Source: PPC Land
