Netflix’s ad plan, which launched in November 2022, has reached about one million monthly US users. User base grew by 500 percent in the month after launch and other 50 percent in its second month.
According to the Bloomberg report, this statistics is at least a month old and the one million monthly active users using the ad tier include multiple people using one account. Antenna, a subscription analytics firm, stated in December that the plan was the least popular Netflix plan during its first month of availability. This pushed up only 9 percent of new signups, accounting for 0.2 percent of overall subscription in the United States. Majority subscribers were new to the service, while 43 percent were existing users who opted to downgrade to the less expensive plan.
As such, Antenna estimated that the ad plan accounted for 15 and 19 percent of new signups in December and January. It highlighted that ad-supported Disney streaming sign ups, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ accounted for 20, 27, and 36 percent, respectively, of new sign ups in the three months after Disney+ launched its ad plan in December. Moreover, HBO MAX’s ad plan, which was launched in June 2021, got 14, 16 and 21 percent of new sign ups during its three initial months of consumer availability.
Netflix told its advertising partners last month that the platform had doubled sign ups to the new tier during January compared to November. But it didn’t elaborate on the exact total number of sign ups. Netflix’s ad tier hasn’t reached the level of high in the OTT’s business, similar to that of Hulu’s, where 57 percent of its user base pays cheaper fees for commercial breaks. Initial report brought about concerns over the overall strength of the tier.
Furthermore, the streaming giant is in talks about buying or building its own internal in-house advertising software.
