Netflix Ad Tier launches today in select territories around the world

The Netflix Ad Tier launch is upon us, ladies, gentlemen, and all your beautiful people looking to save a few bucks on your monthly subscription addiction. If you’re anything like me, you support too many monthly services, and your bank account desperately needs a break. One way to reduce your monthly expenses is by changing your Netflix subscription to the new Basic With Ads model. The new advertising-backed subscription tier launches today in eight countries, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Japan, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and South Korea.

The new Netflix Ad Tier costs $6.99 in the U.S., with pricing varying by region. Netflix‘s chief operating officer and product chief Greg Peters, says Basic With Ads is “a pro-consumer model” designed to generate “a lot more members.”

After years of enjoying ad-free content on Netflix, long-time subscribers will likely scoff at the Basic With Ads tier. However, today’s economy is getting uglier by the day, and cost-cutting measures could help people put food on the table or gas in the tank. It’s an option worth considering, even if watching targeted ads feels gross and time-consuming.

The new Netflix Ad Tier features four to five minutes of ads per hour for films and television series. Content will be interrupted by ads at the hour mark, breaking the flow of your viewing session. New movies will “just have a pre-roll” of advertisements before the feature plays without interruptions. “We’ll try to preserve that sort of cinematic model there,” Peters said. Try being the operative word.

According to Jeremi Gorman, head of worldwide advertising for Netflix, ad space on the service went like hotcakes, with several hundred companies wanting to get in on the action. With Netflix suffering significant losses in subscriber numbers during the pandemic, the platform could use the extra scratch to keep the lights on. One important thing to remember is that subscribing to Basic With Ads is a choice. You don’t have to do it. You can keep your subscription the same as it is now; you’ll just be paying more for ad-free streaming.

Which path will you choose? Will you suffer the slings and arrows of advertisers to save a bit of cash? What if the algorithm is good, and you spend more money on products you might not have seen if you’d remained on the ad-free plan? It’s a slippery slope, folks. Choose wisely.