A deep-dive into the new Netflix Basic with Ads

Thinking of opting for the cheaper ad-filled Netflix tier once it rolls outs? We get ready for several surprises as you never know how many ads you might have to sit through. Netflix Basic with Ads is finally rolling out to selected countries, offering a cheaper Netflix subscription at $6.99 per month. We expect it to be even cheaper on this side of the Sahara.

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The tradeoff with this new tier is that you might have to watch some ads with your movies and TV shows. Expect the same Netflix experience but what will strike you is the unpredictable number of ads one’d have to watch.

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Netflix says you can expect to see an “average of 4 to 5 minutes of ads per hour.” Don’t expect an experience like broadcast TV where you knew exactly when and, often, how many ads you’d have to sit through before the show came back. Depending on your region, expect every Netflix-branded show or movie to have an ad at the front but with differing numbers of midroll ads and some series will have no ads at all. It’s a mixed experience.

As for the ads themselves, they’re pretty standard online video ads. With any brand-new account, expect to be served ads for things like cars, hotels, cruises, jewelry, and fragrances. Netflix says ads are 15 or 30 seconds long. You can pause them, but you can’t skip them unlike on YouTube, though Netflix helpfully counts down how long the ad break is in the top-right corner of the screen.

One major drawback to the ads tier is that some things just aren’t available to watch. Those shows and movies will be marked by a little red padlock in the top right-hand corner. If you see that, you can’t watch the show.

You can click on things with a padlock. On the web, Netflix will helpfully take you to a new screen that lets you immediately upgrade to a higher-priced tier with access to everything. On iOS, Netflix just suggests that you pick an ad-free plan but doesn’t directly point you to anything, likely due to Apple’s restrictive App Store rules.

Netflix has made it clear earlier on that some things wouldn’t be available on the ads tier due to licensing issues, so it’s not exactly a shock. In my brief time with the ads tier, I didn’t find too many padlocks, but there were a few surprises.

Netflix Basic with Ads is exactly what anyone will expect: it’s Netflix, with ads. If that’s something you can live with, and you’re okay with other tradeoffs like 720p video quality and no offline downloads, then saving some money with the cheaper tier might be worth it.