After heavily losing its subscribers earlier this year, Netflix is all set to launch its ad-supported cheaper subscription plan. For the purpose, the streaming platform has joined hands with Microsoft as its advertising partner.
Earlier reports have suggested that several other companies were racing to deal with the streaming partner, including Google and Xfinity. No wonder the ad-based streaming could bring billions of dollars in the ad revenue. However, Netflix happened to select Microsoft for its advertising partner.
In the announcement blog post, Netflix states that it selected Microsoft for its “strong privacy protection”. Sure Google or many other advertising platforms do not fit in that criteria. In addition, Microsoft will offer Netflix its flexibility to “innovate on technology and sales side”.
Microsoft, in its own press release, has also focused on its commitment on customer’s privacy. It also noted that the marketers, using Microsoft’s advertising platform, will have access to Netflix “audience and premium connected TV inventory”.
This didn’t occur at once as Microsoft has been preparing the ground for quite a few months. Microsoft, later last year, acquired Xandr — an advertising platform previously owned by AT&T. According to Wall Street Journal, Microsoft will use Xandr to delivery ads through Netflix.
Neither company provided any details about the nitty-gritty of serving ads to the end-users. Considering their privacy talk, it can be assumed that users will have to share less personal data than to what they already share to companies like Google and Facebook. Though it’s worth noting here that Microsoft has made an exclusive tracking deal with DuckDuckGo that raises question over the software giant’s privacy protection promise.
Right now Netflix offers ads-free basic, standard and premium plans for different price brackets in different regions. According to the headline, it seems a single ad-supported plan could appear among the existing ad-free plans. However, for further flexibility of options, Netflix can also offer multiple ad-supported subscription plans — such as cheaper models of existing plans with ads. It’s also reported that the ads will not be invasive and they will only roll-in at the beginning and at the end of the shows.
