Next week is a big week for Netflix. The third season of dating show Love is Blind is due to drop, though that’s not why. The streamer’s big date with destiny arrives on Tuesday, which is when it will release third-quarter financial results to markets that have spent much of 2022 oscillating between indifference and outright hostility to its stock. Can it change hearts and minds?
Interestingly not waiting around for the quarterlies to do so, the Californian company has just updated investors on a critical part of its mission to calm nerves and spur revenues: advertising. Basic with Ads, a plan with four to five minutes of adverts running before and in many instances during its titles now has confirmed November launch dates for 12 countries.
After years of decrying the merits of advertising, the speed with which Netflix has moved to incorporate it on its platform has been dizzying. As recently as July, when it signed an ad technology partnership with experienced hands Microsoft, it officially identified “around the early part of 2023″ as the expected launch date.
The acceleration of its plans to November 2022 allows it to beat the similarly advert-keen Disney Plus to market. The move also gives it something else to talk about at a time when subscriber growth has stalled, with the outlook inevitably recession-tinged.
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Basic with Ads, which will initially be missing 5-10 per cent of Netflix titles due to licensing reasons, comes in cheaper than advert-free Netflix: it is $6.99 in the US and £4.99 in the UK, for example, compared to advert-free costs that begin at $9.99 and £6.99 in those countries.
While the Irish market wasn’t included in the first dozen launch countries, it is only a matter of time before Irish consumers are also given the choice to put up with adverts in exchange for shaving a few euros off their monthly subscription costs (advert-free Netflix costs start here at €8.99 a month).
This is a new narrative for Netflix. Global economic fragility notwithstanding, the signs are that advertisers have already been won over, with almost all of its advertising inventory for launch apparently sold out. The big cliffhanger is whether the offer will be compelling enough to sway subscribers. Investors will be on high alert throughout 2023 for signs pointing one way or the other.
