Recall that back in May we reported on Netflix’s plan of a partially ad-supported subscription. Now the details are clear, and on November 3, “Basic with ads” will launch in 12 countries, including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, United States.
Basic with Ads will cost $6.99/month in the US, £4.99 in the UK, A$7 in Australia, €4.99 in Germany and €5.49 in Spain. By comparison, the current Basic plan costs $9.99 in the US, £6.99 in the UK, A$10.99 in Australia, and €12.99 in Germany and Spain.
With this new subscription, viewers will receive four to five minutes of advertising per hour. According to Netflix, the commercials are each between 15 and 30 seconds long and can be shown both before and during a movie/series. In the U.S., Netflix will share data about its users and the content they watch with its advertisers to offer tailored advertising.
Greg Peters, chief operating officer of Netflix, told reporters, “A limited number of movies and TV shows won’t be available due to licensing restrictions, and we’re going to be working on reducing that over time.” Depending on the country, about 5% to 10% of titles will be unavailable on Basic with ads. Netflix says it is working with several studios to get as much content as possible in the future. The content that Netflix produces itself, such as Stranger Things, will likely be available anyway.
Netflix is also heavily throttling streaming quality. From Full HD with the cheapest subscription currently available to quality as low as 720p. Also, you can not download content to watch offline, and Netflix states that not the entire content catalog is available with this subscription due to rights issues with purchased content.
The partially ad-supported subscription is a response to the service’s declining subscriber numbers. Netflix lost about 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year, and nearly a million in the second quarter. It was the first time the streaming giant, which has faced massive competition from other providers in recent years, has seen its numbers decline.
[…] $9.99 per month and offered ad-free streaming. Instead, it introduced a new ad-supported plan for $6.99 per month, which has nearly 5 million monthly active users, according to Jeremi Gorman, Netflix’s […]