Introduced a few months ago, the new Essential with ads option is the cheapest offered by Netflix, in exchange for around less than 5 minutes of advertising per hour. An inconvenience that nearly half (49%) of American users find more or less annoying, according to a recent study by Aluma Insights.
Essential with advertising, 17% of subscribers find the amount of advertising painful
17% even go so far as to say that this amount of advertising is “excessive”. However, Netflix remains reasonable compared to linear TV which imposes more than 13 minutes of advertising per hour. In addition, it should be noted that 28% of Essential subscribers with ads who were previously on an ad-free option, find the ad load far too heavy. That's 2.3x more than new users, who weren't on Netflix before, so there's no point of comparison.
Voiceover to Michael Greeson, Founder and Principal Analyst at Aluma
“Having to watch only five minutes of commercials per hour is more bearable than the much heavier ad loads of linear TV,” said Michael Greeson, Founder and Principal Analyst at Aluma. But linear TV isn't necessarily the advertising benchmark for today's viewers, a growing number of whom grew up watching commercial-free streaming video services like Netflix. This has undoubtedly changed their perception of ad loads.”
