As part of its Q2 2022 results announcement, Netflix said it is targeting early 2023 for the launch of its much-discussed advertising tier.
As part of the company’s earnings call COO Greg Peters said the roll-out will begin in just a few markets.
“We’re launching first in the countries that have sort of the more mature ad markets and we feel more confident in the ad monetisation,” said Peters, “then we’ll sort of explore next tiers of countries over time. So that’s a dimension of growth.”
“We’re going to take an iterative approach, this is what we call the Crawl, Walk, Run model,” added Peters. “At the beginning it will look like what you’re familiar with, but over time, we think there’s a tremendous opportunity to leverage that innovation DNA that we have, as well as a bunch of enabling characteristics around addressability and measurability and things like that to provide an incredible experience for consumers, those who choose to take the ad-supported offering, but also provide an incredible experience for brands and advertisers who want to work with us to make sure that we’re doing a good job of elevating what that looks like for them.”
Meanwhile, the company’s co-CEO Reed Hastings predicted audiences will turn away from linear TV in the next decade.
“It’s definitely the end of linear TV over the next five to 10 years,” he said.
In a letter to shareholders breaking down its Q2 performance, Netflix said: “In the US, which is one of the most competitive markets in the world, we drew more TV viewing time than any other outlet during the 2021-22 TV season nearly matching the combined total of the two most watched broadcast networks.”
As part of its Q2 results, Netflix announced it list a further 970,000 subscribers worldwide during the quarter. That is less than the company’s own prediction, as it had expected to drop 2 million subscribers by the end of June. Across EMEA, the streamer lost 770,000 paid members during Q2.
The company is projecting it will add one million subscribers in Q3.
