Today, Netflix Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters announced that the streamer’s new ad-supported offering will launch November 3 in the US and will cost $6.99 per month.
The new ad tier is also available in 11 other countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Called “Basic with Ads”, it offers 720p/HD video quality and an average of four to five minutes of ads per hour. Users won’t be able to download shows and movies, and some titles won’t be available due to licensing restrictions, which Peters says the company is working to fix.
Anyone who grew up on TV will find the new format eerily familiar. “At launch, ads will be 15 or 30 seconds long, running before and during shows and movies,” Peters writes.
Brands and advertisers get expanded audience targeting by country and TV or movie genre, and prevent their ads from showing on content that may be inconsistent with their brand (such as sex, nudity, or explicit violence). In terms of measurement, Netflix cooperates Double Verify and Integral Advertising Science to verify the visibility and traffic validity of its ads from Q1 2023, and will also use Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) in the US from next year.
Netflix’s president of global advertising, Jeremi Gorman, told the press that the company was nearly sold out of its ad inventory before launch, with hundreds of brands in the new tier, including CPG, travel, retail, luxury and automotive.
Both the 15- and 30-second ad formats and limited targeting capacity match the comments Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos made at Cannes Lions in June, when he promised: “What we do first won’t be representative. are of our goals. . . . We start simple and repeat quickly.”