Netflix’s Ad-Supported Plan Could Launch By Year’s End

Netflix’s Ad-Supported Plan Could Launch By Year’s End

Netflix’s promised ad-supported tier and crackdown on password sharing could launch by the end of this year, with the streaming giant reportedly accelerating its timeline on the moves after losing subscribers last quarter.

Executives at Netflix told staffers that they aim to introduce a cheaper subscription with ads during the final three months of 2022, according to the New York Times. The company plans to start restricting password sharing around that same time, the report added.


Bringing commercials to Netflix by year’s end would be a much faster timeline than company leaders have previously signaled. On the company’s first-quarter earnings call last month, co-CEO Reed Hastings told investors that advertising was something Netflix was “trying to figure out over the next year or two.”

That itself was a big deal, given Netflix’s long-standing opposition to ads. But the company’s streaming rivals have shown that customers are increasingly willing to sit through commercials if it means paying less per month in subscription fees. While competitors like HBO Max and Paramount Plus continued to grow their customer bases last quarter, Netfllix lost 200,000 subscribers and expects to lose 2 million more in the current quarter.

Netflix has also blamed password sharing for its sluggish growth, estimating that 100 million households may be using accounts without paying for them. (The company has 222 million paying customers globally.) In March, the company started testing extra charges for subscribers to share passwords outside of their households, initially rolling out the changes in Chile, Peru and Costa Rica.

Greg Peters, Netflix’s COO, said during the last month’s earnings call that the company would “go through a year or so of iterating” before deploying a password sharing plan. Now, according to the Times, Netflix wants to roll out the extra charges “in tandem” with the ad-supported tier it aims to launch later this year.

LA Venture Podcast: VamosVentures Invests In Underrepresented Founders

On this week's episode of LA Venture, hear from Marcos Gonzalez, the managing partner at VamosVentures, a seed-stage venture fund which invests in Latino and diverse founders. Over half of L.A. County is Latino. A relatively new fund, investments are in the range of $100,000 to $500,000. Seems like a great time to be investing in this community! And, Vamos is hiring...

Read moreShow less
Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
The $260M Robot Revolution Happening in Torrance

🔦 Spotlight

Hello Los Angeles,

Forget rockets. This week, the loudest move in the defense tech scene came from a factory floor in Torrance, where Hadrian secured $260 million to fuel its robot-run revolution.

Read moreShow less
RELATEDTRENDING
LA TECH JOBS
interchangeLA