[nomel]

Peacock, Amazon Freemium, etc, have proven that people are ok with eyeballs-on-ads as a payment method. If Netflix opens a free/cheaper tier, it won't make it "worse" for existing paid viewers, it'll just make the service more accessible.

We'll have to see if they end up putting ads in the existing paid service tiers.

[CharlesW]

Amazon already did, while simultaneously introducing a new tier for $3 more per month. Next, expect ad-supported plans to show progressively more ads, and the cost of others' ad-free plans to rise.

[nomel]

Amazon is also charging less than half of what Netflix does, for 4k, and is still the cheapest of all the streaming services. I naively assume they're feeling the pressure more than Netflix does.

[CharlesW]

Although there’s a few great series and movies in the catalog, even at half the price it’s not great value. I’d be very surprised if more than 5% of its subscribers only subscribe to Amazon Video, vs. getting it as a freebie with Amazon Prime.

[LegitShady]

Peacock lost billions of dollars in 2023. Amazon Prime Video is a bit weird because amazon can absorb its giant losses, and prior to this last quarter they were absolutely dumping money into productions that didn't make sense, chasing game of thrones by burning money. Netflix, meanwhile was profitable.

Why is the profitable company chasing the business practices of the companies that are burning billions of dollars per year?

[nomel]

> Why is the profitable company chasing the business practices of the companies that are burning billions of dollars per year?

Peacock was an example of how a large group of people prefer ads to paying, which means it wasn't worse for them. This was in the context of my comment of Netflix potentially adding a "free" ad supported tier, which could make the content available to those people who couldn't/wouldn't pay.

But, as you point out, them not being profitable suggests that "free" with ads isn't sustainable, meaning a Netflix "free" tier probably wouldn't work either, assuming they were similar to the 15 minutes/hour of ads that Peacock has.

[folkrav]

Prime literally just started pushing ads to existing customers and charging $3/month extra for no ads. That’s literally making it worse for existing paid viewers. I have no reason to think Netflix would do otherwise. They all end up doing the same crap the second one of them pulls it off, historically…