Netflix’s Ad-Supported Tier Has 5 Million Global Subscribers; Touts Impressive Engagement Numbers on Plan
Netflix held its 2023 Upfronts presentation this week, and like most media outlets, it used the opportunity to make a little news. The streamer announced that it had 5 million global users on its ad-supported Standard with Ads plan, a propitious announcement after a Wall Street Journal report from Wednesday that claimed the service had fewer than 1 million domestic customers on the tier.
“Since early this year, our ads member base has more than doubled,” Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said. “On average, more than a quarter of our signups now choose the ads plan in countries where it’s available. Seventy percent of our ad-supported members are between the ages of 18 and 49. The signals are promising: engagement on our ads plan is similar to our comparable non-ads plans. That’s critical because it all starts and ends with consumers.”
The WSJ report cited data from research firm Antenna that indicates that Netflix had 937,616 users on its Standard with Ads in the United States. Antenna’s data did not include wholesale or promotional offers from Netflix, nor did it include international customers on the ad-supported tier of Netflix.
Standard with Ads launched in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom at the same time it was released in the United States, and considering how saturated the U.S. streaming market is, it’s hardly surprising that Netflix is seeing more international users than domestic on the plan. Antenna’s data also reported Netflix’s total as of March, so it’s likely Netflix’s Standard with Ads has made customer additions in the intervening six weeks.
If Netflix has seen a large influx of new users to its ad-supported tier recently, the new features it added to the plan at the end of April are likely responsible. Netflix improved the video quality of Standard with Ads from a maximum of 720p to full HD 1080p, and increased the number of simultaneous streams allowed from one to two. Again, this likely did not cause 4 million new subscribers to sign up between the end of April and Netflix’s Upfront, so there must be other discrepancies between Netflix’s method of counting and Antenna’s.
An upfront presentation is essentially a media company’s chance to promote itself to find new advertising partners, so it’s no wonder that Netflix used the opportunity to tout its own success. The company used data from Nielsen to show it had the No. 1 original TV show on streaming in the U.S. for 15 out of 16 weeks - and the No. 1 movie for 14 weeks.
In good news for fans of Netflix Originals, the company announced several shows that would be returning to the service this fall. Shows like “Big Mouth,” “The Crown,” “Love is Blind” and “Sex Education” are all slated to debut new seasons this year, though of course that depends on the writers’ strike. The Writers Guild of America has been picketing studios and streamers like Netflix since the beginning of May, attempting to secure what they deem fair pay after streaming has changed most facets of the television business in the last decade. If these shows are only partially written, it could be quite difficult for Netflix to premiere them this fall, unless the strike ends very quickly.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.