Netflix Announces It Will Include Ads in New Subscription Tier
It’s the beginning of the week and I’m writing about Netflix again. I promise my column won’t always be about Netflix, but the streamer has just been too interesting lately. This week, I’m talking about Netflix’s recent announcement that the streamer will start incorporating advertisements into a lower-priced subscription tier to help come back from a rocky first half of the year, including subscriber losses, stock plunges and layoffs. In my last column , I wondered what steps the streamer would take to attempt to make a comeback, and it seems like advertising is one of their first moves. I don’t know if this step is going to achieve much. Think about it — why do most streaming subscribers, well, subscribe? According to a Statista survey back in 2020, 28 percent of subscribers said that having no commercials was a main reason behind their decision to subscribe. That wasn’t the highest cited reason — expanded access to content was — bu...