Netflix Inc. is set to kick off the September-quarter earnings season for the country's biggest subscription video platforms Oct. 18, and the company's advertising strategy is center stage.
Netflix is combatting a variety of headwinds in 2022, including flattening membership trends, increased competition, and macroeconomic uncertainty, all of which have weighed on the company's stock value this year. The company on Oct. 13 provided new details on its highly-anticipated advertising-supported tier, including a price point that analysts say suggests Netflix is confident about its ability to sell ads. The plan is also aimed at reducing subscriber churn and attracting new, price-conscious consumers.
The "Basic with Ads" service will launch Nov. 9 for $6.99 per month in the U.S., half the price of Netflix's Standard subscription price. That also compares favorably to competitors including Walt Disney Co.'s recently announced ad-supported tier for Disney+, which costs $7.99 per month.
"It will cut down on piracy, it will cut down on churn, and it will aid in adding new subscribers," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter in an interview. "That $6.99 is aimed directly at Disney+."
Investors seemed amenable to the plan, bidding Netflix shares up 5.3% on the day of the announcement, compared to a 2.6% gain for the S&P 500 index. Even with that one-day pop, Netflix shares were down 3.1% for the seven-day period ended Oct. 13.
The long game
Netflix's advertising strategy is not meant to boost revenue immediately, as executives noted upon announcing plans for it in April. Some portion of existing subscribers are likely to downgrade to the new lower-cost tier, offsetting new ad-sales income in the short term. The ad-tier is intended as a long-game play to catalyze membership and revenue growth.
As of the second quarter, Netflix reported average revenue per user of $15.95 in the U.S. and Canada. To break even after the November launch, the $6.99 price point suggests that subscription revenue lost from users that downgrade plans, plus revenue gained from new users drawn in by the cheaper tier, will be equivalent to $9 in average revenue per user for its U.S. base, Pachter said.
"It tells you that they're pretty confident in their ad load and ad rates," the analyst said.
Pachter and other analysts also agreed that the ad-supported tier should lead to meaningful revenue from reduced subscriber losses over time.
Pachter estimates about 15% of Netflix customers churn out of the service in a year. In the U.S., that would be about 10 million users canceling their Netflix service. The ad-supported tier should retain a significant portion of those potentially lost members, which could result in millions of net additions a year.
The counteractive impact on churn is one of the most valuable benefits of the low-cost advertising tier, Truist Securities analyst Matthew Thornton said in recent notes on Netflix's advertising ambitions.
On the high end, Thornton estimated that Netflix could see a 25% gain in domestic members and revenue by 2025. Even if the advertising tier only improves the company's churn rate and gross membership additions by 5%, that would yield a 7% gain in domestic memberships and revenue in three years, the analyst said.
International flight
Growing domestic users is important because in recent quarters, essentially all of the company's paid net membership additions have come from low-ARPU markets in the Asia-Pacific and Latin American regions. However, the ad-based strategy will also provide lower-cost options in more price-sensitive markets.
Netflix said it will launch the ad-supported service in 12 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. Those countries together account for about 60% of Netflix's global subscriber base, Kagan industry analyst Seth Shafer said in an interview. Kagan is a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.
"It's a pretty big commitment," Shafer said.
A rapid global rollout of the low-cost ad-based tier could expand Netflix's addressable market in low-ARPU markets, growing Netflix's business by volume if not by ARPU.
"Disney's move is less designed to get new subscribers [and] more designed to increase ARPU from existing subscribers," Shafer said.
Consumer trends
Streaming video, like many technology products, benefitted from strong consumer sentiment and market trends in recent years. In 2022, it is less certain how macroeconomic pressures from inflation and rising interest rates will weigh on streaming platforms.
"Consumers are definitely cutting back on spending. But they seem to be cutting back on the quantity of spending across the board, not cutting entire spending categories," Shafer said, citing biannual survey data from Kagan.
While demand for streaming video remains strong, more respondents to Kagan's September U.S. Consumer Insights survey were canceling streaming subscriptions than those surveyed six or 12 months earlier. That trend could soon be reflected in the customer metrics published by smaller platforms, Shafer said.
Major platforms with large, diverse libraries like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon.com Inc.'s Amazon Prime Video and Disney's Hulu LLC should be more insulated in the third quarter, though they face more competitive pressures.
"Streaming is starting to look like the movie studio business, where releasing or not releasing just a few blockbuster movies can make or break a year for a studio. Content slates are going to be more important as we continue to compare these platforms quarter by quarter," Shafer said.