Netflix's Standard with Ads plan grows to 40 million subscribers
There was a lot of outcry when Netflix announced the introduction of ads on its platform. The streaming service introduced an ad-powered plan in late 2022 in select regions. At $6.99 per month, it was considerably cheaper than non-ad plans, even back in 2022.
In fact, adding another user slot to one of the ad-free Netfllix plans is more expensive than subscribing to the ad-powered plan.
Netflix did a lot to push the ad-powered plan. First called Basic with ads, it soon was rebranded to Standard with ads, to highlight its advantages over Netflix's basic plan.
This was not the only decision that Netflix made. It increased the price of regular prices several times since the introduction of the ad-powered plan, and is now pushing the remaining basic plan subscribers to other plans by shutting down the cheapest ad-free plan.
All of these changes increased the attractiveness of the ad-powered plan over Netflix's other plans.
There are downsides to subscribing to Standard with ads on Netflix. Besides ads, which is the main issue that streaming users may have, it does not include all shows and movies of Netflix's catalog.
Streaming started as a replacement for cable TV. It promised an ad-free experience and unlimited access to content. This changed with the introduction of ad-powered plans.
Currently, Netflix customers may either pay $6.99 for the ad-powered Standard with ads plan, or at least $15.49 for the standard plan, which does not show ads.
This month, monthly active users of Netflix's ad-supported plan reached 40 million for the first time. Just this January, the number sat at 23 million.
While that is still not the majority of Netflix's 270 million subscribers, new ad-plan subscribers make up 40% of the service's new subscribers currently. With the next price hike looming on the horizon, that ratio is projected to increase even more, provided that Standard with ads will not see price increases again.
Netflix continues to invest in live programming. While coverage differs from region to region, Netflix is especially active in the United States. Viewers will be able to watch two Christmas Day games from the NFL and WWE RAW matches from 2025 on.
Closing Words
Netflix will continue to push Standard with ads over its other plans. The cancelling of Basic plans will push a percentage of these subscribers to the ad-powered plan because of its price advantage over the Standard plan.
Netflix is also working on new ad formats, including binge ads and ads in games, to increase revenue generated by its ad powered plan.
Since other streaming services follow Netflix's lead, streaming is either getting more expensive for the majority of users or more annoying, because of advertisement.
What about you? Are you subscribed to streaming services? Do you mind ad-powered plans?
I converted another friend to a home media set up recently. He started out with plex but I did inform him to move to jellyfin when he finds his feet.
He was shocked to see how much better the interface was and is very happy with his experience. He is happily ripping his blu-ray and 4k media library to watch at his own private leisure now.
I feel a great sense of pleasure in guiding him out of the BS. I simply asked him to pay it forward to all your friends and family by doing the same and if any of them have the capacity to contribute to software such as Jellyfin then by all means do so.
I am not really surprised that people are still subscribed. People are fools and suckers.
I assume they’ve ne’er heard o’ “vote wit’ yer coffer.” ’cause o’ these scallywags, the situation will get worse much more. Prices rise when advertisements get more intrusive, lengthier, ‘n frequent.
No idea why people keep using streaming services like Netflix.
Doesn’t take much to stand up a JellyFin container, install Handbrake and take a quick trip to the bargan DVD bin at the local store.
Can watch what you want, when you want without their bait and switch tactics even if the internet is down.
Still own the DVD too. If you don’t want to watch it anymore? Just remove from JellyFin and sell the DVD to the next bloke who wants a Kung Fu Panda fix.
Handbrake? You can losslessly merge VOB files containing MPEG-2 data, hope that’s what you’re doing, as opposed to re-encoding.
Have used several options to merge the original VOB files including cat, pv and ffmpeg.
Ultimately settled on using Handbrake to re-encode to mpeg4 since it works for personal use case however mileage may vary. Keep framerate identical to original and works fine with better compression.
Personally like the space savings for re-encoding however if someone prefers merging would personally recommend using the ffmpeg option to prevent playback issues that can come up using cat or pv.
Thanks for the heads up… better for people to know there are options than thinking there is only one choice.
+1, you are 100% right. My uncle spent more than 175€ last month only to see a couple of movies and no more than three or four football games. Everything about streaming is completely overrated considering the prices. Indeed you can find tons of entire movies uploaded to Youtube, completely free. Classic cinema, golden years cinema, tons of good movies just to fry your eyes for hours.
History repeating itself.
Remember Cable started as an “ad free and always a clear picture” replacement for over the air tv, then they put ads in.
I remember it clearly because I was one of the people actually inserting the ads into your cable tv progamming.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #10: Greed is eternal
Great respect to anybody who can quote all Rules of Acquisition. People thought that they were Star Trek novelty like Klingon language. But Rules of Acquisition are eternal and always true.
I don’t subscribe to any streaming networks, but I love watching movies and used to buy large quantities of DVDs from Amazon UK. Originally, it was possible to purchase any number of discs and have them sent for just £2,49, but Amazon UK has suddenly hiked their postal rates to £10,57 plus 0,99 per kilo which is about six DVDs. But allowing for packaging, probably only five DVDs would weigh a kilo. Don’t ask me what Amazon is trying to achieve with these exhorbitant rates, but for me at least it’s killed off buying anymore DVDs from them directly.
Instead, what I do these days is buy second hand DVDs from Amazon Marketplace resellers. Postal charges are between £2,50 and £3,49 and are charged per disc even though it’s possible to package three DVDs in one envelop. That puts me off buying more than one at a time. The DVDs are dirt cheap though and don’t cost more than £2,00 on average with some costing far less than that even though they were recently released.
As for Netflix, or any other streaming service I’m just not interested especially if it means being bombarded with ads. I hate those constant interruptions as well as being forced to watch something I’m not remotely interested in.
big fan of DVDs – not everything looks amazing on DVD but most movies fare well – plus they are very easy to copy and remove protections, and even modify split/merge files.
My collection of ripped DVDs, CDs and BluRays has grown to double in the past year.
Imagine paying for adverts… I bet these are the same types of people that don’t use adblock, they’re already used to occasional adverts on blogs, news sites, youtube – so this is not a problem for them due to conditioning.
Good news for investors! The stock surges every quarter during earnings on news like this and rarely returns to some previous baseline. NFLX–definitely not a meme stock. July is the next reporting date.