Netflix’s upcoming ad-supported tier could offer a significant discount over the company’s current plans. According to Bloomberg, the streaming service is considering a monthly fee of $7 to $9. To put things in perspective, the company’s current “Basic” plan costs $10 per month and does not include HD streaming. You can access 4K content on Netflix for as little as $20 every 30 days.
The new tier could be available in a half-dozen markets by the end of the year, with a larger rollout planned for 2023. According to Bloomberg, Netflix wants to avoid many of the criticisms levelled at other ad-supported streaming services. Initially, the company intends to show only about four minutes of advertising per hour and will not place any at the end of a show or movie.
Furthermore, most people will see the same set of advertisements, owing to Netflix’s desire to avoid situations in which people see the same few advertisements repeatedly.
According to Bloomberg, Netflix does not intend to show advertisements during children’s programming or original films. According to code found within the app, the new tier may also remove support for offline viewing.
In a statement shared with The Verge, Netflix described Bloomberg’s report as “all just speculation at this point,” adding that it was “still in the early days of deciding how to launch a lower priced, ad-supported tier and other services.”
For years, Netflix resisted adding an ad-supported tier, but that was before its recent slump. Netflix lost nearly 1 million subscribers in its most recent fiscal quarter, following a 200,000-member drop in the first three months of the year.
