By Jonathan Easton
Netflix is targeting 40 million ad-supported users by 2023, according to sources inside the company.
The streamer will launch its ad-supported tier on November 1 in countries including the US, Canada, the UK, France and Germany. Pricing is yet to be revealed, but it has previously been reported that the company had internally decided on a monthly cost of US$7-9 per month.
Now the company’s ambitions for the product have been revealed, according to a Wall Street Journal report which cites a document Netflix shared with ad buyers. It notes that Netflix and its ad partner Microsoft have been meeting with ad buyers over the past weeks in an attempt to lock in deals.
The company reportedly told ad execs that it expects to have 4.4 million unique ad-tier viewers by the end of 2022, with 1.1 million coming from the US. This is expected to increase to 40 million by Q3 2023, with 13.3 million in the US. The report highlights the usage of the word ‘viewers’ as opposed to ‘subscribers’, with it being likely that more than one person per household will be watching Netflix and its associated ads.
The report adds that some ad buyers have been unhappy with Netflix’s plans, including the limited ability to choose where ads run. An earlier report said that Netflix is planning on selling about four minutes of ads per hour, while showing ads before and during some programmes.
Some ad buyers said they were unhappy with certain aspects of Netflix’s planned service, including that there is expected to be only limited ability to choose where ads run.
Netflix currently has around 220 million subscribers globally, following two consecutive quarters of subscriber losses.
