Netflix will become the first streamer to offer downloads to ad-supported tier

The streaming giant Netflix keeps tweaking its offerings (and what it retracts) as it influences its customer base. It rolled out an ad-supported tier almost a year ago that gave users access to its content but with ads. With the recent development, it looks like Netflix will allow subscribers to download shows and movies shortly.

As per Netflix’s blog post, the streaming giant is planning on giving its subscribers the ability to download movies and shows to binge-watch. As the plan is ad-supported, users will still see ads running across but having the ability to download content makes Netflix the first to do so after becoming the first streaming service to have an ad-supported tier. Disney Plus and Max also have ad-supported tiers as of now.

Starting Q1 2024, Netflix says it will show fewer ads to the subscribers. It will be introducing a new binge ad format according to which, if a user ends up binge-watching three episodes of a show, the fourth will be ad-free meaning there won’t be any ads when viewing this episode.

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Of course, there’s always a catch. Turns out Netflix is planning on rolling out ads by title sponsors which means you will end up watching pre-roll ads of brands with a global duration of 10, 20, and 60 seconds. It will be a shocker for some since the previous pre-roll ads were 15 and 30 seconds only.

The new feature across its ad-supported tier will be rolled out across 12 regions including the US and UK. The silver lining according to me is the fact that download shows and movies won’t carry any ads and will be treated as the pricier tiers so that’s a plus.

Netflix has been bumping up the prices on its plans for some time now. Both Basic and Premium took the bullet while the ad-supported and Standard plans were spared but that’s the question. A noteworthy fact about Netflix’s ad-supported plan is that the plan has 15 million monthly active users globally which is a good thing for the giant streamer that has been battling the password-sharing dilemma that all premium services have to endure.

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