Six months after the launch of the cheapest subscription and with ads, Netflix He held his first event ahead. It was intended for the main referents of the advertising industry. The loudest fact of the presentation was that the cheap plan of the streaming platform already has nearly 5 million monthly active users globally.
Of course, “globally” is a bit pretentious, given that ad-supported Netflix is only available in 12 countries. Also, at first glance, the figure is impressive and seems to suggest that the affordable subscription is achieving great success. But is it really so?
The key point to keep in mind is that Netflix talks about “active users per month”, not “subscribers”.. These are two completely different indicators. And since the information from the platform is partial, it does not give a complete picture of the actual reach of your advertising plan.
So far the streaming service did not reveal how many subscribers his cheapest plan has. And the number of active users per month can be somewhat misleading, as it includes all residents of the house who use different profiles of the same account. So it goes without saying that the number of subscribers on Netflix with ads is less than the number of people who use it every month. He essence the question is how much lower.
Ad-supported Netflix subscription wants to gain momentum
Rumors suggest that the number of subscribers to the cheap plan today it would be 1.2 to 1.6 million. Numbers that don’t sound unreasonable if we divide 5 million monthly active users by a hypothetical average of 3 or 4 residents for each household that uses a Netflix account with ads. However, since there is no official information, this is nothing more than speculative data.
From Netflix, they only said that their ad plan’s subscriber base has “more than doubled” since the start of the year. Wall Street Magazine indicates, meanwhile, that the membership in question had 937,616 subscribers in the United States through March of last year. This would mean that, if the general rumors were true, the ad-supported alternative would have a much greater penetration in the North American country than in the rest of the markets where it is available.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the ad-supported Netflix option isn’t interesting in other territories. Not so long ago it became known that 4 out of 10 new subscribers in Spain chose the plan for 5.99 euros. Interesting above average number. According to the company, 25% of new registrants in countries where it is available choose the ad-supported alternative today.
It is clear that a cheap subscription is still a new product, which is only six months old on the market. It has a long way to go and develop in a segment where competition between platforms is getting very strong. But before he’s sparked any outrage, it looks like he’s taking a more drastic first step than people think.
An interesting first step
Assuming a cheap subscription has 1.5 million subscribers today, we’re talking about 0.65% of the 232.5 million accounts that exist on the service. At first glance, this is not much, but there are nuances. If in just 6 months and being available in only 12 countries, Netflix has already achieved that about 1% of its subscribers worldwide use the ad plan, this should not be despised. Obviously this model is still in its infancy but could be expanded very aggressively as it starts to open up to more markets.x
Of course, the success of Netflix in advertising depends not only on subscribers, but also the presence of advertisers on the platform. Therefore, their involvement is crucial. The company claims that its users are 4 times more likely to interact with ads on Netflix than on other streaming services, and more than 4.5 times more likely than on traditional TV.
Another interesting fact is that almost 80% of the content played on the Netflix ad plan is viewed from a TV. While in relation to the public who chooses this subscription, over 70% of users aged 18 to 49; while the median age is 34 years.
Source: Hiper Textual
