(San Francisco) Netflix announced on Wednesday that its subscription with ads now represents nearly 5 million monthly active users, while some observers worried about the supposed lack of success of the new formula.
The number of users is different from the number of subscribers, because subscribers can share logins for the streaming platform with other people.
“We prefer to talk about the measurement methods that matter to advertisers,” the company said in a statement. “Six months after launch, our ad-based plan has nearly 5 million monthly active users worldwide, with an average age of 34. »
The announcement comes as the wall street journal published an article on Wednesday claiming that some advertisers are “frustrated by the small size” of the consumer base likely to see ads and because they cannot serve as many as they would like.
After strong growth during the pandemic, Netflix weathered a tough 2022, losing nearly 1.2 million subscribers in the first half, before soaring again during the holiday season.
The Californian group has undertaken to focus on diversifying its sources of income rather than the number of users.
After years of reluctance, in November the service launched a new cheaper subscription ($7 per month in the United States) with advertising. It is available in 12 countries, from the United States to Australia via France and Japan.
“Since the start of the year, our ad user base has more than doubled,” co-CEO Greg Peters said in the statement. “On average, more than a quarter of new subscribers choose this formula in the countries where it exists”.
The interest for brands is in particular to “communicate with our audiences” when they watch programs “among the most watched and most culturally significant” each year, insisted Peter Naylor, Netflix’s vice president in charge of advertising sales.
At the end of March, the platform had more than 232 million subscribers worldwide.
In addition to advertising, it set out to force users to pay to add profiles to their account, instead of sharing their password for free.