Netflix considers lower-price plan with ads amid drop in subscribers
FILE IMAGE - A photo of a person about to watch Netflix on a screen inside an apartment on Jan. 13, 2021, in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images) SAN FRANCISCO - Netflix is "quite open" to offering a lower-price plan supported by advertising as the company reckons with a drop in its subscribers and other rival platforms chipping away at its vast audience.Netflix's customer base fell by 200,000 subscribers during the January-March quarter, the first decline the streaming service has seen since it became available throughout most of the world six years ago.
The drop stemmed in part from Netflix's decision to withdraw from Russia to protest the war against Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 700,000 subscribers.
The company projected a loss of another 2 million subscribers in the current April-June quarter."Those who have followed Netflix know that I have been against the complexity of advertising and a big fan of the simplicity of subscription," co-CEO Reed Hastings said in an earnings interview on Tuesday."But as much as I am a fan of that, I am a bigger fan of consumer choice, and allowing consumers who would like to have a lower price and are advertising-tolerant to get what they want makes a lot of sense," Hastings continued. "That's something we're looking at now, we're trying to figure out over the next year or two.
But think of us as quite open to offering even lower prices with advertising as a consumer choice."Netflix offered no additional information about how a cheaper ad-supported service tier would work or how much it would cost.
United States
|
Cases: 46 252 513
Deaths: 750 423
Recovered: 0
|
India
|
Cases: 34 321 025
Deaths: 459 652
Recovered: 0
|
Brazil
|
Cases: 21 835 785
Deaths: 608 235
Recovered: 0
|
United Kingdom
|
Cases: 9 215 683
Deaths: 141 607
Recovered: 0
|
Russia
|
Cases: 8 494 589
Deaths: 237 619
Recovered: 0
|