Netflix had somewhat taken the streaming world by surprise in 2022 by offering its subscribers a cheaper plan than the classic offer in exchange for broadcasting advertisements. Specialists were surprised to see the platform abandon one of its major selling points: the ability to watch programs without interruption. But the company was going through an extremely difficult period at the time, explained to Hollywood Reporter Co-CEO Greg Peters.
Never say never
In an interview published this Friday, the executive explained that one should “never say never”, a reference to the fact that Netflix had previously assured that it did not want to be involved in the advertising sector. To justify the choice of launching the offer with advertising, Greg Peters described the “desperate situation” in which the company found itself because of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
With the influx of new subscribers confined to their homes, “We understood that in two quarters, we had reached the equivalent of two years of development and that we were going to hit a wall,” the CEO explained. This is why the company had to find a way to attract new users and “do now what we had planned to do over the next two years.” Hence the quick decision to launch the offer with advertising.
