Streaming app Netflix has, years after promising it would never include ads, almost completed the job of including ads. The company’s new ad-supported tier, as it stands, offers several drawbacks beyond just including ads. Turns out, there’s a fresh one of those.
Netflix isn’t looking to lose even the slightest amount of money with its ‘Netflix with ads’ version. In addition to taking money from advertisers, the platform intends to take money from subscribers. It’ll take less… but it’s still asking for some cash to use its service.
Maybe chill a bit, Netflix
According to the folks over at Bloomberg, the streaming service is looking at a $7 to $9/m price for its ad-supported tier. That’s in addition to a) less content, b) no offline downloads, and c), making viewers watch ads. Speaking of watching ads, viewers on that cheaper tier can expect four minutes of ads every hour. Which… okay, isn’t the worst thing in the world.
But that’s the expected American pricing. $7 to $9, here in South Africa, is about R120 to R150 at current exchange rates. The cheapest Netflix option currently in the States costs $10/m. We can reasonably expect that a cheaper tier launched in SA will conform to South African pricing,
Here at home, the equivalent to the $10/m plan, which includes a single device and SD streaming quality, is R100/m. South Africa also has a mobile-only pricing tier that costs R50/m. Should Netflix with ads launch in South Africa, we can expect it to cost between R60 and R90/m. Or the service might take advantage of a new, ‘cheaper’ version of Netflix to jack up its current local pricing. But big corporates never behave that way just for money, do they?
Source: Bloomberg
