ThoughNetflix has offered multiple subscription tiersfor years, the company introduced a new ad-supported tier in 2022. Dubbed “Basic with Ads,” this tier is available to users at a lower price point of $7.99 per month, compared to the Standard tier’s $17.99 price and Premium’s $24.99 price.
Per Antenna (viaBloomberg), new data now makes clear thatroughly half of the people who signed up for Netflix in 2025 have opted for the ad-supported tier. This is an increase from 2024, which featured only about 40% signing up for the ad tier, and 2023, which featured only about 20%. Check out a tweet fromLucas Shawbelow, which features a graph of the Antenna data:
What This Means For Netflix
Streaming Is Evolving
Though cable and broadcast TV used to be the dominant means of consuming TV shows and movies, streaming has now taken the lead. Both traditional forms of TV featured commercial breaks, and one of the novelties and benefits of streaming was that it offered movies and TV shows ad-free.
Over the last few years, however,ad-supported tiers have become popular offerings at most major streamers, not just Netflix.Disney+ and Hulu offer ad-supported tiers, as does HBO Max, among others. Prime Video, too, has introduced ads into its standard tier, with ad-free streaming now a higher-priced tier that users must opt into.
Why This Trend Makes A Lot Of Sense
Ad-supported tiers give users access to the same content at a lower price point. Enduring ads may have once felt like a thing of the past, butit could eventually become the norm once more as premium tiers simply become too expensive for the average consumer.
It’s not surprising to see the growth of this particular tier atNetflix, and it’s likely that other streamers are experiencing similar results. How this shapes the future of streaming remains to be seen, but ads are evidently not going anywhere.
