Netflix subscribers are upset that they must both pay £3 extra every month or watch 30-second adverts.
On 4 June, the streaming service scrapped its £7.99 Basic plan. Users have been routinely moved over to the Standard with adverts plan, which prices £4.99 / month. To keep away from watching adverts, viewers must improve to the Standard £10.99 / month plan, costing them an additional £36 every year, or the £17.99 / month Premium plan, which is able to set them again £120 extra every year.
Subscribers have been unimpressed with this transformation.
One X person complained: “Netflix can f*** off with their adverts. Everybody needs to unsubscribe until they drop them. Don’t upgrade for twice the price for ad-free. It’s pure greed.”
Another viewer wrote on X: “Nahh netflix really has adverts!? Are you having a laugh. Lemme cancel cuz you can’t stress me with ads and take my money.”
Reddit customers claimed that the adverts generally malfunction and trigger the app to freeze, and that the adverts generally cut characters off mid-sentence.
The adverts vary between 15-30 seconds lengthy. According to a survey by Variety, 19 per cent of US Netflix subscribers have been utilizing the Basic plan on the finish of April – about 20 million Americans.
This introduction of adverts is regardless of Netflix’s founder and CEO Reed Hastings promising in 2018 that Netflix would by no means have adverts on its web site.
The Netflix Help Center website says: “A small percentage of devices that can play on ad-free Netflix plans can’t be used with an ad-supported Netflix plan. This is because the Netflix app or software on the device can’t be updated to a version that supports ads.”
So, some subscribers with older TVs could not be capable of use the cheaper Standard with adverts plan, and must improve to the Standard £10.99 / month model.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers solely. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews till cancelled
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers solely. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews till cancelled
Several TV shows and movies cannot be shown with adverts in due to licensing restrictions, so people on the Standard with adverts plan will be unable to watch them. Variety estimates that this is between 5-10 per cent of content. In the US, this currently includes The Walking Dead, House of Cards, Peaky Blinders and The Good Place. Some Sony movies such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and No Hard Feelings can’t be seen with out adverts.
Netflix’s shift to promoting is certainly one of many measures meant to boose its income, equivalent to its crackdown on password sharing.