Cheaper, but gets significant limitations.
In June, Netflix confirmed what had already been rumored for months: a partially ad-funded subscription was on the way.
The details are now clear, and on November 3 Basic with Ads, or simply Advertisement for Netflix, will be launched in 12 countries.
Countries include, among others, the United States of America, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. No Nordic country will receive the new subscription at this time.
In the United States, “Basic with ads” costs seven dollars a month.
That’s $3 less than today’s base offer with no ads. Thus, the savings from watching ads will not be very significant.
The new subscription will give viewers four to five minutes of advertising per hour. According to Netflix, commercials should be between 15-30 seconds in length each, and can be shown before and during a movie/series.
In the United States, Netflix will share data about its users and the content they view with advertisers to deliver personalized ads. Both on and off the job.
It’s not just advertising that’s new in the new subscription.
Netflix also severely reduces streaming quality. From Full HD with today’s cheapest subscription, to only HD quality – also known as 720p.
Also, you will not be able to download content for offline viewing, and Netflix also states that the entire content catalog will not be available with this subscription due to rights issues for purchased content.
Netflix says it’s working with several studios to get as much content as possible going forward. Content produced by Netflix itself, such as Stranger Things and Squid Game, will likely be there anyway.
The subscription funded in part from ads comes in response to the service’s low subscription numbers. In the first quarter of the year, Netflix lost about 200,000 subscribers, while the number was close to 1 million in the second quarter. It was the first time the numbers went down for the streaming giant, which has faced massive competition from other players in recent years.
Netflix isn’t alone in working with an ad-funded subscription offering. Disney+ will also get an ad-based solution during the year.
In this country we also have the free Pluto TV service, which offers, among other things, some of the content that you can find on Viaplay, with ads only.
TV 2 Play has always had “Basis” subscriptions for news and general content, with both solutions having a lower price than the usual bundles without ads.
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