Research: Half Netflix ad subs say ‘too many ads’
April 26, 2023
Though Netflix’s ad-supported tier averages less than five minutes of advertisements per viewing hour, 49 per cent of ‘Basic with Ads’ subscribers found it to varying degrees heavy, with 17 per cent seeing it as excessive, according to analyst firm Aluma Insights. This despite the fact linear TV programming has over 13 minutes of ads each hour, 2.5 times that of Netflix’s ad-supported tier.
“Having to watch only five minutes of ads per hour is a delightful reprieve from the much heavier ad loads of linear TV,” said Michael Greeson, founder and principal analyst at Aluma. “But linear TV is not necessarily the advertising benchmark for today’s multi-source viewers, a growing number of which came of age watching ad-free streaming video services such as Netflix. Undoubtedly, this has altered how they perceive ad loads.”
Aluma’s research found 28 per cent of ad-supported Netflix subscribers that switched from an ad-free tier found the ad load far too heavy, 2.3 times greater than new subscribers that signed up ‘Basic with Ads’.
Other key insights:
- Half of ad-supported Netflix users new to the service are 65 and older, four times that of ad-free switchers.
- 25 per cent of ad-free switchers are Hispanic, twice the incidence among new subscribers.
- New ad-supported users are 33 per cent more likely to live in the Southern US than are ad-free switchers.
- Ad-free switchers are 34 per cent more likely than new subscribers to have children in the home.
- New ad-supported users are four times more likely than ad-free switchers to be Late Mainstreamers or Tech Laggards.
Aluma is in the last stages of a new report on how users perceive the ad loads of premium ad-supported SVoD service users, including Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and ESPN+, and that examines the relationship between cancellation proclivities and ad load perceptions.