Netflix has announced a 9am US-PT November 3rd U.S. launch time for its first ad-supported plan.
Netflix Basic With Ads will be priced at $6.99 per month and will be available in twelve countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.
The new tier will get an early rollout on November 1st in Canada and Mexico for testing. With the enactment of the plan, both the Basic With Ads and ad-free Basic tier will see video quality coming in at 720p HD resolution – an improvement over the SD quality of the ‘Basic’ tier.
However the ad-supported plan will not include Netflix’s full content catalogue, with around 5-10% of movies and TV shows unavailable due to licensing restrictions. Offline viewing will also not be available for that plan.
The Netflix tier with ads will serve an average of 4 to 5 minutes of ads per hour. New-release movies will include only pre-roll ads to preserve the cinematic experience.
The stock market hasn’t reacted much to the news, Netflix stock dipped 1% to close the week at $230 a share, with debate ongoing about the financial impact of the company’s abrupt about-face and embrace of advertising.
Source: Rapid TV News
