Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Would you like to give 3 yuan less per month in exchange for 720p + ads? Since the massive loss of subscribers, Netflix has been preparing advertising services for the past few months, hoping to open up a new way to get rich in addition to subscriptions.

Recently, the service, called Basic With Ads, was officially unveiled: ads for 4-5 minutes per hour for $6.99 a month, video quality capped at 720p / HD, and content caching is not allowed. The service will be launched in 12 countries, including the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France and Germany from November 3.

Monthly subscription fees for advertising pages in various countries, pictures from Netflix | netizens have Say NO: "720p are you kidding me?"

Before yesterday, although everyone had a psychological expectation that Netflix, which had been "clean" for many years, would launch an advertising plan, when the content of the plan really came out, there were still a lot of complaints on the Internet, and everyone refused.

Among them, the most controversial issue at present is the resolution of 720p in the advertising version. Many netizens said, Brother, it is 2022 this year, and you are still working on 720p in 2007, okay? What, let me pay to watch mosaics?

The picture is from Twitter. A netizen said, "seriously, I can't remember the last time I heard about 720p."

The picture comes from Twitter and netizens have pointed out that at present, many subscription services with advertisements on Hulu, Amazon and other platforms support 4K. Disney can have a 4K HDR experience by adding one yuan more than Netflix basic, and many 4K videos of Youtube can be watched for free. Peer comparison, it seems that Netflix is a "pill" this time.

The picture is from Twitter and some people speculate that Netflix has adopted a strategy of making low pricing and quality of service before there is more room for price increases in the future. The problem is that many people think that the price of $6.99 is not low, and that $3.99 is too much for both the resolution and the frequency of ads.

Indeed, according to Netflix, the expected time for each commercial will be between 15 and 30 seconds, with about 4-5 minutes of commercials per hour in front of and interspersed with the film. That is to say, users will expect to see at least 10 ads for every hour of watching the movie. Imagine what it would be like to watch a movie, such as watching "Strange things" when the pros and cons were fighting it out, and suddenly there was a mouthwash advertisement.

After the launch of the service, Basic With Ads service, together with Basic, Standard and Premium, will constitute the four levels of Netflix subscription service. Compared with Basic, the advertising version has basically the same experience except for advertising and cannot be downloaded. It can access most movies of Netflix, but not limited content.

Although the pictures were sorted out and produced according to the information on Netflix's official website, Netflix still said that the overall construction of the service content was "pro-consumer". Including its internal content tagging team has made a lot of efforts to find natural breakpoints in different programs and movies to place ads, promising to improve the viewing experience of the advertising version in the future, and so on.

| | Netflix, which has 200 million users, is still "arrogant" despite the great pressure of growth.

With the past two years Amazon, Apple, Disney and other giants have entered the bureau streaming media to carve up the market share, in the past a dominant Netflix fell into the plight of continuous loss of users. In the same period last year, the number of Netflix users increased by 1.54 million and net profit increased by 87.6%. This year, not only has it lost about 1 million customers, but net profit has only increased by 6.5%.

This also directly led to Netflix having to put down his posture and begin to tighten his belt. On the one hand, instead of turning a blind eye to user password sharing, we began to crack down on password sharing and raise subscription fees one after another. On the other hand, for the first time, Netflix has broken the decades-old "no advertising" tradition of the company to explore new ways to generate revenue.

Netflix's user growth, the picture is from Bloomberg, but even so, Netflix clearly takes the initiative in recruiting advertisers, even with a very coquettish attitude.

According to revelations, Netflix does not provide advertisers with additional features like many other streaming media, such as using third-party services to verify that ads are running and reaching the advertiser's target audience. At the same time, there is no agreement for advertisers to ensure that their ads are not juxtaposed with those of competitors, that is, advertisers do not know whether their competitions will also appear in the ads. In addition, advertising is sold at a fixed price, rather than in the form of an auction, giving it more pricing power.

The overall feeling is that Netflix in advertising investment in this matter is a "love whether to buy, do not buy" attitude. In fact, mastering the initiative to introduce advertising may be a strategy established by Netflix long ago.

As we all know, Netflix has always refused to advertise. In the 24 years since its inception, Netflix's main source of revenue has been content-driven membership subscriptions, and it doesn't want advertising to affect users' viewing experience.

And when Netflix "put down their posture" to accept advertising, they do not want to be pushed by advertisers at the expense of users. Therefore, Microsoft, which provides more technical support, has been chosen as its advertising partner, rather than Google or other more mature advertisers to snatch its own voice.

According to the report, Microsoft is leading the Netflix advertising agency meeting, while most of the sales staff sent by Microsoft have social and search backgrounds, but have no advertising sales experience in TV and streaming media. Some buyers who have participated in the demonstration of Netflix advertising have said that "they are completely asking for rather than selling advertising, and they are very strange to all this."

But even so, Netflix says it has sold most of its advertising seats so far. After all, with 220 million users, this traffic portal is a very attractive number for any advertiser, and Netflix ads are not worried about selling at all.

| the price war has turned white-hot, and netizens are calling for the TV version of the advertisement blocking tool.

Prior to Netflix, major streaming platforms such as Disney+, Hulu, Peacock Video of NBC Universal and Warner's HBO Max have launched or announced low-cost subscription services with advertisements. The advertising version of Disney+ Basci is priced at $7.99 a month and is expected to be launched in December.

From the point of view of Netflix's advertising time of 4-5 minutes per hour, it is basically consistent with competitors such as HBO Max and Disney+ Basic. But in terms of pricing, Netflix is slightly lower than other platforms and seems to hope to win more users in terms of price. But at the same time, it also sacrifices some "quality" than other platforms, such as 720p low resolution.

The picture is from Carton Crave's official Twitter. In fact, for the streaming media where the giants are huddled together, the competition has entered a white-hot stage. In order to compete for users, original content is becoming the "golden beast" of various platforms. In 2022, Netflix expects to spend $17 billion on original content; Disney expects to spend $11 billion on streaming, accounting for more than half of its total film and television spending; Amazon spent more than $13 billion in 2021; Paramount spent $14.7 billion in 2021.

Obviously, under the high cost, there is a good chance that subscriptions alone will not be able to make ends meet. So all the major platforms are focusing on the realization of traffic, and recently, even Apple TV +, which has always been not short of money, has been rumored that it will officially open the sale of advertising space next year.

With more and more advertisements on various platforms, everyone is calling for programmers to quickly develop an advertisement blocker for TV. watching a movie and chasing a show is too bad.

The picture is from Twitter. Of course, many people also understand the advertising plans of these platforms. It is obviously a good thing for the audience that the giants are crazy about the content, which means that the audience can see more high-quality content and well-produced dramas.

For those who don't want advertising, you can continue to choose ad-free versions for a few more yuan, but also allow these platforms to provide a new option for people who want to watch videos for less.

Pictures from the TwitterNetflix advertising market is undoubtedly greatly stirred the pool, so that the overall competition in the advertising market has become more fierce.

Investors are generally optimistic about Netflix's latest advertising plan. Wall Street analysts expect Netflix to generate $3.6 billion in advertising revenue in the United States and Canada and $8.5 billion worldwide by 2025, making it another growth pole in addition to subscription services.

So, do you want to subscribe to the Netflix ad section? Which one of the streaming media platforms do you like most? You are welcome to leave a message for discussion.

Note: the picture is from Twitter. If you do not agree to use it, please contact us as soon as possible and we will delete it immediately.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Silicon Man (ID:guixingren123), Wen | Juny Editor | VickyXiao

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