Netflix might roll out an ad-supported tier of its streaming service in the last quarter of 2022. It’s a lot sooner than expected, but it’s not a terrible idea.
Ads are coming to Netflix, and it’s possible they’ll be here sooner than first thought. Per a report from The New York Times, Netflix executives reportedly have told employees that an ad-supported tier of the streaming service is being planned for a rollout sometime in the last three months of 2022. That’s a lot quicker than what investors were told in the company’s earnings call on April 19. Netflix co-founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings told investors that the company would take the “next year or two” to figure out the possibility of ads on Netflix. The other Netflix executives during the company’s recent earnings calls also didn’t rule out the possibility of an ad-supported tier, but there was no hint that the dramatic business shift could happen as early as this year. “I’m a bigger fan of consumer choice,” Hastings said on the call. “And allowing consumers who would like to have a lower price and are advertising-tolerant get what they want makes a lot of sense. So that’s something we’re looking at now. We’re trying to figure out over the next year or two. But think of us as quite open to offering even lower prices with advertising as a consumer choice.
