Netflix is set to launch its ad-supported subscription tier in November, scrapping its original plan to launch next year.
The streaming giant has reportedly brought the launch forward to November to beat Disney+ to the chase, which plans to debut its own ad-supported tier in December.
Premiering in the US, France, Germany, Australia and Canada, the new cheaper ad-tier will reportedly cost viewers between $7 (£6.10) and $9 (£7.85). At the moment the streamer’s cheapest subscription costs $9.99 (£8.71), with a standard subscription costing $15.49 (£13.51).
The new subscription plan will be an addition to current tiers, meaning existing customers will not be forced to watch ads.
“We are still in the early days of deciding how to launch a lower priced, ad-supported option and no decisions have been made,” a Netflix spokesperson said.
“So this is all just speculation at this point.”
To receive more marketing news stories just like this subscribe to Marketing Beat’s FREE daily newsletter
In July Netflix announced that it has lost one million subscribers in its second quarter. The new ad-tier, originally dreamt-up in April, plans to offset the loss in subscribers due to the fact that many people have opted to ditch the service due to a hike in price most recently.
Co-CEO Reed Hastings recently said in a letter to the firm’s investors: “Our challenge and opportunity is to accelerate our revenue and membership growth by continuing to improve our product, content and marketing as we’ve done for the last 25 years, and to better monetise our big audience.”
Most recently, it was discovered that future users of Netflix’s proposed ad-supported tier may be blocked from downloading series and films to watch offline.
According to code found inside the streamer’s iPhone app by developer Steve Moser, the Netflix app may only allow offline downloads “on all plans except Netflix ads”.
