The fourth season of Stranger Things has been a hit, the advance of the premiere of the fifth of Cobra Kai too and, although right now no more titles come to mind, I blame it without a doubt on my lack of time to see more movies and series, because I am sure that the dean platform for streaming this type of content there will have been other very interesting releases throughout this 2022, and there are still four months to complete that list. However, even if you are a weekly subscriber to our summary of releases, you will not find in all its editions this year the most anticipated premiere of Netflix in 2022.
I am referring, of course, to the subscription plan with advertising. Yes, the one that at the beginning of the year they said was not in their plans, but that after the worrying end of its first quarter marked a 180 degree turn, although in reality we should say that there were two consecutive turns of 90 and another 90, since that at first Netflix stated that they were studying it, but in the medium-long term (for some time in 2023 or 2024), but that it has finally been accelerated, to the point that it is expected to debut in some markets before the end of 2022. A pretty smart move, in my opinion, as the debut of a similar plan on Disney + is also scheduled for this year.
There are many doubts, of course, about this plan with advertising: their prices, the number of advertising inserts, their format, how intrusive they will be… and this, in a company that pays an attention to detail that we can describe as outstanding, will undoubtedly be giving a lot of work in their offices. A lot of work concentrated in a “little” time, because even without abandoning their usual work model, they must keep deadlines to a much lower margin than they use regularly.
We still do not know the price of the Netflix plan with advertising but, according to Bloomberg, Netflix is ​​considering a monthly fee of between seven and nine dollars. We are talking, of course, about the price in the United States, which will almost certainly be the first market to receive this new plan. It is unknown, for the moment, if it will be the only market in the debut of the new plan or if, on the contrary, Netflix intends to cover some other geography from day 1.
Be that as it may, the range proposed by Bloomberg is quite wide. To understand it better, we must remember that the basic Netflix plan has a monthly fee of $9.99 in the United States, and we can think that the conditions of both plans, the basic one and the one that includes advertising, will be similar (a single concurrent access, a single device with offline content and without access to HD content). But it may also not be so, because, as we told you just a few days ago, it could have even more limitations, from access to less content to the inability to download content to consume it offline.
Thus, while waiting to know the final conditions of this new plan, the price difference would be between an interesting 30% if it finally costs seven dollars and offers the same as the basic plan, and a meager 10% if Netflix finally marks a difference of only one dollar between both plans and also introduces additional limitations. A big difference that will determine, with total probability, your success or failure. What price do you think will be the end? And do you think the ad-supported Netflix plan will succeed?
