Ads Have Officially Arrived on Netflix

The streaming world has been evolving and changing a lot over the past few years.

©Netflix

We’ve seen new services become available, like Peacock, HBO Max, and Paramount+, as well as major changes to things like Netflix and Disney+. We learned a while back that Netflix would start having advertisements on the service for the first time, and now, the day has finally arrived.

Netflix has introduced its new advertising-backed subscription tier in 8 countries, according to Deadline. These countries are the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and South Korea. The changes went into effect at 12PM ET.

©William Antonelli/Business Insider

The Basic with Ads plan has already come to Canada and Mexico, and it will soon be coming to Spain (on November 10th). Pricing is different depending on where you are, but in the United States, the Basic with Ads plan is $6.99 a month. Note that this is a dollar less than Disney+’s planned tier with ads.

©Netflix

Chief Operating Officer and Product Chief Greg Peters says the new tier is “a pro-consumer model” that will bring in more members. But, do know that not ALL of the content will be available on Netflix for this new tier. About 5-10% of programming will be missing at the time of launch due to having to obtain rights and revising contracts for different content on the service.

©Netflix

The Basic with Ads tier will have four to five minutes of ads per hour on both series and feature films. But, not all movies will be interrupted. For example, the upcoming release of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will only have ads before the movie begins. But, movies that have been on Netflix for a while will most likely have ads in the middle of them.

©Netflix

There are definitely some reasons to pay for the Netflix tier that doesn’t have ads, though. The $15.49 a month version in the United States has 1080p resolution (with a lot of things in 4K), and multiple concurrent streams available. But, the Basic with Ads tier has a 720p resolution, a lower picture quality, and just one stream is allowed at a time, and you can’t download anything.

©Netflix

The ads that you can expect to see on Netflix now will be your usual for fast-casual restaurants, travel, cars, beer, etc. Political ads are not going to be on the site, and there won’t be any ads for things like guns, smoking, or any other products/services that Netflix considers illegitimate.

Disney+ will be adding an ad tier to the service by the end of the year. So, right now, Apple TV+ is the only streaming service that doesn’t have an ad-backed tier option.