Netflix is revealing the details of their upcoming cheaper ad-supported streaming tier, including pricing and launch date, which will be very soon.
Netflix announced their detailed launch plan for an ad-supported tier, and it’s coming very soon. Over the years, Netflix has adapted to the changing media landscape to become one of the most important media companies in the industry. After launching in 1997 as a mail-in DVD service, Netflix became one of the first online streaming platforms in 2007. They focused for some time on bringing licensed titles from various distribution companies to their online audience before creating their own originals, starting with the political drama series House of cards in 2013. Since then, their original productions have staged, ranging from reality TV such as The circledocuseries included tiger kingand hundreds of original film and television titles, some of the most recent being Rob Zombie’s The Munsters and the serial killer series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
While Netflix has been one of the preeminent streaming services for the past decade, the company has faced stiff competition from new competitors, including Hulu, Disney+, and Prime Video. This year marked the first time since they launched their streaming platform that they lost subscribers every quarter, leading many in the industry to speculate how far they could fall. Netflix has responded by backing their financial spending and focusing on spending less money on blockbuster franchises like the spy thriller universe of the gray manas well as introducing a cheaper ad-supported tier (an option also being pursued by their rival Disney+).
Today, Netflix announced the details of their ad-supported plan. In the United States, the tier — called Basic with Ads — costs $6.99 per month and will be available on the platform beginning November 3 at 9:00 AM PST. They also announced that this tier will be available for $5.99 per month in Canada and £4.99 per month in the UK, with plans also available in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Spain.
How will the ad-supported plan change the Netflix experience?
Beyond just the ads themselves, which air at a rate of about 4 to 5 minutes of ads per hour of content, there are some caveats to Netflix’s new Basic with Ads plan. Due to licensing issues that Netflix says they are working on, certain unspecified titles will not be available at the lower tier. Users will also not be able to download the titles, which is useful for those who go on air travel and need to turn off their Wi-Fi, among other things.
This new Netflix model can still appeal to viewers who want to keep an eye on how much money they spend on different streaming services. Those who have experience using other ad-supported platforms like Hulu probably won’t experience much difference between the two. However, for some it can be a shocking experience to watch shows like: Weird stuff or invent Anna are interrupted by ads, something that has never happened to those shows before thanks to their nature as Netflix exclusives.
Source: Netflix
