Netflix’s forthcoming ad-supported tier could represent a significant discount on the company’s existing plans. According to Bloomberg, the streaming giant is considering a monthly price between $7 and $9. For context, the company’s current “Basic” plan starts at $10 per month and does not include HD streaming. You can pay as much as $20 every 30 days to access 4K content on Netflix.
The new tier could arrive in half a dozen markets before the end of the year, with a broader rollout planned for 2023. Bloomberg reports that Netflix wants to avoid many of the complaints that frequently come up with other ad-supported streaming services. At first, the company plans to show only about four minutes of ads every hour and won’t place any at the end of a show or movie. Additionally, most people will see the same selection of ads, mainly because Netflix wants to avoid a situation where people see the same few advertisements repeatedly.
Bloomberg previously reported that Netflix doesn’t plan to show ads during kids content or original movies. Code found within the app suggests the new tier could also drop support for offline viewing. Netflix described Bloomberg’s report as “all just speculation at this point” in a statement the company shared with The Verge, adding that it was “still in the early days of deciding how to launch a lower priced, ad-supported tier and no decisions have been made.”
For years, Netflix bristled at the thought of adding an ad-supported tier, but that was before its most recent slump. In its most recent fiscal quarter, Netflix lost nearly 1 million subscribers, following a 200,000-member decline during the first three months of the year.
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