Netflix will launch its version with ads in Spain at 5.49 euros on November 10

Netflix has stepped on the accelerator and already has its new subscription with ads ready.

The Basic plan with Ads, as it will be called, will be available in Spain from November 10 at 5:00 p.m., at a price of 5.49 euros per month.

The prices of the three current plans in Spain are 7.99 euros for the basic, 12.99 for the standard and 17.99 for the premium.

12 will be the countries that will have this option available at its launch.

In Mexico and Canada it will be available from November 1, while on November 3 Germany, Australia, Brazil, South Korea, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom will be added.

Spain will be the last to join this possibility, on November 10.

The price of the new subscription in the United States will be 6.99 dollars (there, the basic version, the cheapest so far,

is priced at $9.99).

As announced by the company in a press conference held virtually with media from the countries affected by this change and in which Greg Peters, chief operating officer and product director of Netflix, participated, the rest of the plans will not be altered. and current subscribers will not see their conditions altered, unless they decide to switch to the new cheaper option.

More information

Payment platforms open to cheaper versions that include ads

In addition to the date and price, the company has also provided other details.

Whoever contracts this option will see an average of four or five minutes of ads per hour, which will be included both at the beginning of the movie, series or program, and in the middle.

The ads will last between 15 and 30 seconds.

There will be a limited number of series and movies that will not be available in this version due to licensing restrictions, a problem they are working on, according to the company.

Another difference is that you will not be able to download titles for offline viewing.

The video quality will be up to 720p/HD, the same as the basic plan.

The company has preferred not to advance subscriber goals or the benefit it hopes to obtain with this new option.

The intention to launch a version with advertising was communicated by Netflix in April, but early 2023 was always spoken of as the tentative date on which it would be operational.

However, it only took six months to have its launch ready.

In this way, Netflix has been ahead of one of its main competitors in the platform war, Disney +.

The Mickey Mouse company will launch its version with ads on December 8 in the United States and plans to expand internationally throughout 2023.

Netflix has also marked distances with its rival in price: while its new option will be considerably cheaper than the current versions without ads, Disney has chosen to take advantage of it to raise the price of the ad-free plan in the United States to $10.99 and keep the current price — $7.99 — for the version with ads.

Actually, the turn of Netflix and Disney +, payment platforms that until now had not had advertising in their programs and that always defended the absence of ads as one of their essences, is not something new in the world of streaming services. internet tv.

HBO Max, Paramount +, Peacock (NBCUniversal) and Hulu (Disney) already have cheaper versions with advertising.

The data confirms the good reception by subscribers: in 2019, 70% of viewings on Hulu (a pioneer in this offer) were from subscriptions with ads.

In the case of Disney +, subscribers of the version with ads will find about four minutes of advertising per hour, although there will be none for child users.

loss of subscribers

This new Netflix option comes in a year in which the platform has lost subscribers for the first time.

The decline began in the first quarter of 2022, when it reported a drop of 200,000 subscribers and an even worse outlook for the following quarter.

Soon after, came the announcement of the new ad-supported version, something that many analysts interpreted as the company's own implicit recognition that its growth prospects were no longer as broad as in previous years.

The second quarter of the year was again settled with negative data for Netflix, but not as bad as it had anticipated:

lost 970,000 subscribers, far from the two million it had advanced.

The launch of the new version with ads has been done at full speed.

In July, Netflix already announced its alliance with Microsoft so that this technology company would be in charge of managing advertising.

It has also sealed agreements with audience measurement companies, such as those announced this Thursday with the auditors Broadcasters' Audience Research Board in the United Kingdom or Nielsen in the United States, so that viewing data, very opaque until recently, is more transparent and can serve as a reference for advertisers.

It is not the only way that Netflix wants to try to gain users.

It is also trying to control the habit of sharing passwords among friends or family.

Something that the company itself encouraged until not long ago has become a problem now that, according to company executives, it slows down its growth possibilities.

To do this, this summer it has tried in some Latin American countries to request an extra payment for each new user outside the family unit.

You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on