Netflix‘s ad-supported tier is officially here.
If you’re in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, Korea, or Brazil, you can now choose to put up with some ads in exchange for a lower-priced subscription.
In the U.S., the new Basic with Ads tier is $6.99—$3 cheaper than the ad-free Basic plan. The two plans have some similarities: both only allow viewing in HD rather than “full HD” or “ultra HD,” and both restrict subscribers to only watching Netflix content on one device at a time.
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But there are some differences, too: while Basic subscribers have access to all of Netflix’s movies, shows, and mobile games, Basic with Ads users will find that “some movies and TV shows [are] unavailable,” according to Netflix’s description of the tier.
Basic with Ads also doesn’t allow local downloading of content, while the Basic plan does.
So what’s Basic with Ads like once you’re inside?
Apparently, weird.
Netflix told subscribers they should expect to watch between four and five minutes of ads per hour of TV/movie time. The Verge investigated and found that while the time ratio seemed about right, what was weird was when ads would run.
Every homegrown Netflix movie or show appears to have pre-roll ads, but whether or not they have midroll ads (and how many midroll ads they have) varies. Non-Netflix movies The Verge sampled ranged from having no ads at all to having pre-roll ads and up to three mid-roll ads at seemingly random times throughout the film.
Ads are between 15 and 30 seconds long, and they don’t seem to be very targeted. The Verge reported seeing generic ads for cars, hotels, jewelry, and fragrances, and Digiday reported last month that Netflix’s targeting options are limited to what country users are in and some content-based categories (so presumably if someone’s watching sports movies they might get sports-related ads).
Presumably Netflix will bring in sharper targeting as time goes on. It’s already set to start offering performance metrics via Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings sometime next year–probably a good move, considering advertisers reportedly balked at its high CPMs in the runup to Basic with Ads’ debut.
