The streaming giant, Netflix is reportedly considering pricing its new advertising-supported tier at $7 to $9 a month, which is 50 percent less than the fee it already charges for its most popular plan.
Currently, Netflix’s plan costs $15.49 per month to stream content with no commercials. The aim behind the price cut is to bring in more subscribers who are fine watching some advertisements for a lower monthly rate. The streaming service is said to sell about four minutes of commercials per hour for ad-supported services.
Ads are shown before and during TV shows and movies, and Netflix plans to sell about four minutes of ads per hour, which will be shorter than the 10 to 20 minutes of commercials per hour shown by cable companies.
Customers can’t skip ads or access playback controls while ads are playing, but Netflix wants to limit ad targeting and make sure ads don’t repeat themselves too often.
The ad-supported tier will have more restrictions than more expensive tiers, and Netflix has no plans to allow subscribers to the plan to download TV shows and movies for offline viewing.
Netflix turned to advertise because it was unable to sustain subscriber numbers. The company lost subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 for the first time in 10 years, blaming ‘a large number of households sharing accounts’ and ‘competition’.
Last month, Netflix announced a partnership with Microsoft for its new ad-supported streaming tier. It made Microsoft become the streaming giant’s ‘global advertising technology and sales partner’.
