Netflix Plans to Charge $7 to $9 for Ad-Supported Plan
Netflix is planning to charge between $7 and $9 for its upcoming ad-supported tier, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Netflix's current lowest-priced plan is $9.99 per month in the United States, with the plan offering 480p streaming.
Netflix also has a $15.49 per month plan for 1080p streaming, and a $19.99 per month plan for 4K streaming. The lower-cost ad-supported tier is aimed at those who don't mind ads and who do not want to pay $9.99+ for a standard Netflix subscription.
Ads will be shown before and during TV shows and movies, and Netflix plans to sell approximately four minutes of advertising per hour, which will be shorter than the 10 to 20 minutes of commercials per hour shown by cable companies. Customers will not be able to skip ads or access playback controls while ads are playing, but Netflix does want to limit ad targeting and make sure ads are not too repetitive.
The ad-supported tier will have more restrictions than more expensive tiers, and Netflix does not plan to allow customers subscribed to the plan to download TV shows and movies for offline viewing.
Netflix has turned to ads because it has not been able to maintain subscriber count. The company lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years in the first quarter of 2022, and blamed "a large number of households sharing accounts" and "competition."
Netflix is aiming to introduce the more affordable plan in limited markets before the end of the year, but a full rollout may not happen until 2023.
Popular Stories
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Top Rated Comments
The fact it’s 2022, and Netflix is offering 480p streaming is beyond embarrassing. No shame!
Really a sight to behold