For several months, Netflix has been planning to launch a new, ad-supported tier to its streaming service. This week, the company finally revealed that it plans on launching the new tier sometime in early 2023.
The company recently shared its Q2 earnings report (PDF). That’s where it revealed its plans to launch the ad-supported tier early next year.
As the company has been known to do with past new features, the ad-supported tier will likely roll out slowly so the platform can get feedback on the new offering.
“We’ll likely start in a handful of markets where advertising spend is significant. Like most of our new initiatives, our intention is to roll it out, listen and learn, and iterate quickly to improve the offering,” reads a statement from the earnings report.
Netflix already has many logistics in place for the ad-supported tier. In this new venture, it recently announced a partnership to hand the advertising reigns over to Microsoft.
Additionally, the company says it has cleared most of the platform’s content to start showing ads. “The vast majority of what people watch on Netflix, we can include in the ad-supported tier,” said co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a Q2 earnings video.
“We will clear some additional content, but certainly not all of it,” he continues. “But we don’t think it’s a material holdback to the business.”
With that said, all that’s left now is for the company to build and optimize the new tier and get ready for launch next year.
We don’t know the pricing details for the new tier yet. However, we can imagine it would be significantly cheaper than the tiers that Netflix currently offers.
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