Nov. 3 marked the end of an era as Netflix will officially include advertisements after the launch of four new subscription plans.
The new plans are: “Basic with Ads,” “Basic,” “Standard” and “Premium.” The options are available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
For those who have a current account with Netflix, an upgrade is required to avoid commercial breaks during programs.
The pricing for each plan is as follows:
-Basic with Ads: $6.99 per month
-Basic: $9.99 per month
-Standard: $15.49 per month
-Premium: $19.99 per month
Netflix employee Anna Lauron has been working in the company’s customer service department for roughly two years.
“It’s a new feature here in Netflix, because it’s cheaper,” Lauron said. “But for me, it’s really not good, because there are commercials.”
The website also says “a limited number of movies and TV shows won’t be available due to licensing restrictions,” which, according to the website, the company is working on.
Student Leslie Barner said she was initially unaware of the changes taking place, to her, the news was disappointing.
“I just think that’s really weird, because we already pay a subscription to watch it,” Barner said.
Barner said the new feature is annoying, because an individual might as well just use cable television to record shows and later skip through the commercials.
Netflix said that advertisements will be about 15 to 30 seconds each and that ads will be based on broad targeting by country and genre. In total, commercials will last four to five minutes each hour and will show before and during each program.
The company also said that advertisers will have the ability to keep their advertisements from showing up on content that may not be aligned with their standards, such as elements of sex, nudity or graphic violence.
BYU junior Conner Vigil said he finds the change annoying and it makes him feel like it’s just a big company that is capitalizing on the power they already have.
“They already make a ton of money as it is,” Vigil said. “They really need to do that?”
Vigil said that from a company perspective, he understands where Netflix is coming from, focusing on sales. However, he said he thinks the added advertisements are unnecessary, since he feels the company is just trying to increase their profit which he believes they do not have a need for.
Netflix has said that their new updates are partially with the intent to discourage account sharing.
“Today’s widespread account sharing between households undermines our long term ability to invest in and improve our service,” Chengyi Long, the director of product innovation, said on the Netflix statement about the subscription changes.
