Netflix ad-supported tier starts November 3, undercutting Disney+ at $7 a month

Daniel Sims

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Something to look forward to: After recent troubles forced Netflix to adopt some of its competitors' policies, the company has announced when it will start offering a cheaper ad-supported tier. The new strategy is designed to compete directly with Disney+ and Hulu, but with some crucial differences.

Viewers willing to put up with ads for a cheaper Netflix subscription can do so starting November 3 at 9 am PDT (noon EDT) for $7 a month. The new basic tier will include most, but not all, of the same content as the other plans.

Netflix's new "Basic with Ads" tier will open in 12 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and the US. Regional pricing outside the US is available on Netflix's blog.

The new plan will play about four or five minutes of ads per hour of streaming, with each running for 15 or 30 seconds before and during programming. Advertisers will have tools to target ads based on region, genre, and content. In August, leaked code indicated users might have to answer questions to help advertisers tailor ads.

One potential disadvantage of the new tier is that it will limit video quality to 720p. By comparison, Hulu's basic ad-supported tier is the same price as Netflix's but includes 4K HDR streaming. Paramount Plus's ad tier is slightly cheaper at $5 and allows 1080p streaming. The HBO Max basic tier is similar but at $10 a month. Depending on what content you're interested in, Disney+ has the best basic plan at $8 to stream in 4K HDR without ads.

Another downside to Netflix's ad plan is that it excludes some of its content, but not much. Services from companies that own all their content, like Disney+, don't have this problem, but Netflix has to license much of what it offers, and those agreements change when advertising gets involved.

Netflix COO Greg Peters admitted that the ad tier might cut five to 10 percent of the catalog, which is not bad depending on what programming the plan axes. The ad-based subscription will undoubtedly include all Netflix original movies and TV shows, like The Sandman, Dahmer, Entergalactic, and Derry Girls.

The company's new strategy is probably an attempt to shore up subscribers after its difficulties earlier this year. In April, Netflix reported its first-ever subscriber loss, leading to a 75 percent stock price crash. Eventually, the company reported a Q2 loss of almost a million subscribers.

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The world is a commercial. I have DTV and I must pay for 20 + channels that are merely commercials. Money makes the world go round
 
Those 5-10 percent is the only watchable content.
Has there ever been a TV service with more than 5% to 10% things you want to watch vs over and above doing things in your life.
I have Netflix full HD or whatever it's called - gift 3 subs to extended family - happy just to watch one show a month or a movie or 2 .
Thing is if money is a problem - rotate streaming services - bleed that 5% - then onto next or a break to save anymore money
 
They needed to do something. Their prices are getting very steep for some potential customers. It won't be long until folk start pirating TV series in mass again.
 
I got no real problem with them getting an ads version. I got a problem with paying for an ads version.
If I'm paying, I'm not gonna tolerate them.

But please say that I misunderstood one thing in this article.
"The new plan will play about four or five minutes of ads per hour of streaming, with each running for 15 or 30 seconds before and during programming."
I hope that means that the individual ads is going to be 15 or 30 seconds and not that each break would be 15 or 30 seconds. Cause if its just 30 seconds, that would mean 10 breaks per hour.
 
They needed to do something. Their prices are getting very steep for some potential customers. It won't be long until folk start pirating TV series in mass again.
It's already started check out this article - https://www.techspot.com/news/96310-online-piracy-rise-television-movies-leading-charge.html
IMO, the streaming services brought this on themselves by deciding they were going to make billions and billions by jumping in on the fad and not understanding that the model they were adopting was the model people were dropping. I'll continue to subscribe to Netflix at a non-commercial tier, but I will not constantly subscribe to other services - rather, I'll rotate through them when they have content I have not seen.
 
Were gonna go full circle and cable will probably come back next year to raucous applause.

Then I'll facepalm myself into a coma.
I doubt people will return to cable or satellite. I certainly won't. Eventually, these streaming services will figure out that they need to make their content available for licensing. Already Disney+ is losing money with their new streaming service. All these streaming services fail to understand, IMO, that people were not going to streaming as part of a fad to keep up with their neighbors, rather they were doing it to stop paying outrageous sums of money for content they never watched - at least, that is why I dropped satellite.
 
They needed to do something. Their prices are getting very steep for some potential customers. It won't be long until folk start pirating TV series in mass again.

I got Netflix and Disney Plus and still choose to torrent many of their shows, mostly because I can't stand the quality of the stream (especially Disney Plus, which is limited to 720p when watched on PCs).
 
No Thanks Netflix. I'm not paying you to watch ads. You either get a fee, or you get to show me ads, not both.
 
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