Netflix Introducing Ad Tier in November

This November, Netflix is launching its new ad-supported membership tier. Initially, the roll-out was planned for the early part of 2023. Instead, it seems they decided to accelerate commercials’ introduction. As of now, there’s no official price comparison for the tiers.

Variety was able to reach out to Netflix for comment, but unfortunately, representatives for Netflix didn’t really have too much to say. The statement put out by the company simply reads: “We are still in the early days of deciding how to launch a lower-priced, ad-supported tier and no decisions have been made.” Although they’ve been pretty tight-lipped, sources did confirm a few facts about how exactly their ad structure will work.

Netflix is partnering with Microsoft to get together their ad deals, and the bidding starts at $65 dollars per one thousand views. Apparently, the general price for ad space on streaming services averages somewhere around $20 dollars per thousand views, so Netflix is starting somewhere significantly higher. Will they be talked down somewhere closer to what’s standard in the industry, or will they set a precedence for more expensive ad space in that sphere? Only time will tell on that one.

We know a few other things as well. Netflix is asking for a $10 million dollar commitment from ad agencies per year. Netflix is also estimating that the new tier will have roughly 500,000 subscribers around the time the tier launches. The ads also won’t be targeted at the viewer, it’ll be more akin to the kind of targeting that happened on cable TV. The tier will also have a system that prevents repeats of the same ad over and over, which should save some headaches.