The sun is setting on Netflix
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has confirmed in Cannes that, as it had already announced to its employees, it will launch an advertising-supported tier later this year “for folks who say, ‘Hey, I want a lower price and I’ll watch ads.’”
Supposedly, ad-free services will remain for those users willing to pay for a clean, distraction-free broadcast.
The company claims that it “wants to do better than TV,” which probably implies that it will try to implement some sort of targeting system aimed at serving advertising based on socio-demographic characteristics, explicit data, and implicit data based on the usage it manages to capture from its users. At the moment, all indications are that the best positioned to take over the management of these advertising spaces are Google and Comcast.
In addition to incorporating advertising in certain segments to make up for the drop in revenue and the fall in long-term subscribers (13% of the current cancellations in the service correspond to users who had been subscribed for more than three years, which is worrying), the company has cut more than 300 jobs and is looking for ways to reduce the sharing of passwords between different households or at least charge for it, a policy it is already implementing in countries such as Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, with varying degrees of success.
