Starting in November, Netflix will finally roll out its new ad-supported tier for just a few bucks a month, yet another sign that the one-time disruptive upstart streaming service has slowly become a cable package by a different name.
Netflix announced today that its new Basic with Ads tier will launch on November 3, 2022 for $6.99 in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and the UK. In exchange for watching an average of four to five ads per hour lasting between 15 and 30 seconds, Basic with Ads gives subscribers access to much of Netflix’s programming, but not the platform’s entire catalog.
A small selection of television shows and movies will not be available to Basic with Ads subscribers due to licensing restrictions that Netflix is ​​currently working on. In addition, Basic with Ads subscribers cannot download content to their devices and video quality is limited to 720p/HD.
During a press conference on the new tier, Netflix cautiously explained that while Basic with ads is priced competitively with some of its streaming competitors, the launch price in the future may not necessarily be what the tier costs. This would follow given Netflix’s history of price hikes.
Unsurprisingly, Netflix is ​​(seemingly) already thinking about how much more it can charge people to watch the kind of ads that drove them from terrestrial TV to streaming services in the first place. But what will ultimately determine what becomes of Netflix’s Basic with Ads is whether the offering is something people will actually sign up for when it becomes available next month.