Netflix Co-CEO, Ted Sarandos gave confirmation on the matter of ads coming to the service. Ted confirmed this in an interview at the Cannes Lions advertising festival. Although we are not given an official date on which we can expect this shift, a report suggests that the company is planning to roll out the feature by the end of 2022.
This step from them seems to be a well-thought-out one as the company faced a huge loss of subscribers globally in Q1 of 2022. This was also reportedly the first time that they had lost these many subscribers in a decade. Still, they managed to hold on to the title of the largest streaming service with a user base of around 222 million subscribers.
The Netflix Co-CEO talked about how the company is already in talks with multiple potential advertisers.
“We’ve left a big target segment off the table, people who say ‘Netflix is expensive for me so I don’t mind the occasion advertisements.’
-Netflix Co-CEO, Ted Sarandos.
Ted adds,” We are planning to include an ad tier as a different subscription plan for people who are willing to watch the ads at a lower price. We are not adding to the Netflix plans you know today.”
The streaming giant has currently declined quite a lot, as compared to the numbers they previously used to see. The company on its part has taken a considerable amount of effort into staying relevant and interactive. A month ago, there was also news about Netflix planning to bring live streaming to the platform in some capacity. The product is said to be in very early development stages right now and it will air live content such as during a standup show or some other unscripted shows.
Back in April, the company even rolled out a ‘Two Thumbs Up’ button for audiences to use this whenever they like a type of content a lot and would want to see more of it. Ultimately, as the company is observing a decline in its share prices, Ted Sarandos says that Netflix being acquired is also a reality that we might have to accept. If this goes through or not, only time will tell.
