Netflix Will Soon Allow Downloads on Its Ad-Supported Plan

It’s been a year since Netflix launched its ad-supported tier, and things seem to be going well for the streaming giant. Even as a crackdown on password sharing and price hikes threaten to alienate its customers, Netflix is drawing in record subscribers, many of whom are embracing the ad-based plan as a more affordable way to satisfy their Netflix fix.

Recent financial and analyst reports have suggested that Netflix makes at least as much money — if not more — from running ads than it does from its paying customers, and now it’s celebrating that milestone with some new perks that it hopes will encourage even more people to opt for its cheapest plan that funnels money into its coffers from advertisers instead of its customers’ wallets.

It’s ramping up those efforts even more, with additional formats and categories for advertisers to take advantage of, additional targeting options, and even sponsorships where advertisers can tie into specific shows, just like in the old days of broadcast TV. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

However, among all these changes, there’s also a bright side for Netflix users. Those subscribing to the ad-supported tier will soon be able to download episodes for offline viewing, marking the first time an ad-supported streaming service has offered this capability.

The biggest challenge to allowing downloads on an ad-supported service is delivering the ads in a timely manner and collecting the kind of metrics and analytics from them that advertisers care about. After all, an ad on a downloaded episode may be stale by the time a user gets around to watching it.

Ad-Supported Downloads

Although Netflix has several new technologies for monitoring and tracking ads on the back end, it’s unclear exactly how it plans to handle this on the user side. However, we’ll soon find out as the company says downloads will “become available by the end of the week.”

The catch is that you won’t be able to stack up nearly as many downloads as you could on a more expensive, ad-free plan. Netflix has updated its support article on downloading to add that “Ad-supported plans are limited to 15 total downloads per device per billing cycle.”

The “per billing cycle” requirement suggests that once you’ve downloaded 15 movies or TV show episodes, you won’t be able to fetch any more until your billing cycle resets. However, the good news is that this limit applies separately to each of the two devices you can download shows on.

Nevertheless, that’s a stark contrast to the ad-free plans, where users can “have up to 100 active downloads at a time per device,” where the number of devices that can store downloads can be as high as six on the priciest Premium plan (even though you can still only watch on four at a time).

Like the ad-free plans, downloads on the ad-supported plan will expire “after a period of time,” although Netflix continues to be vague about how long that is, and it may vary depending on the movie or TV show.

The lower download limit and expiry time will undoubtedly help with ad-supported downloads since Netflix won’t need to worry about the ads no longer being relevant to its advertisers’ needs. Presumably, “renewing” an expired episode to re-download it again will also renew the advertisements that it contains.

Rewarding Binge Watching

Next year, Netflix will also roll out a new “binge ad” format that “taps into the viewing behavior of watching multiple episodes in a row.”

While it seems that this format will be optional for advertisers, shows using it will provide an ad-free viewing experience for users every fourth episode — as long as they’re watching consecutively.

Starting in Q1 2024, our advertisers globally will be able to utilize our new binge ad (wt) format that taps into the viewing behavior of watching multiple episodes in a row. After watching three consecutive episodes, members will be presented with a fourth episode ad-free.

Netflix

We’re not sure yet exactly how this will work. Presumably, advertisers who target a specific series will be able to opt into “binge ads” to encourage viewers to keep watching, in which case only “binge ads” will be permitted.

Netflix is also offering advertisers more ad lengths, expanding its 15- and 30-second ads to 10-, 20-, and 60-second spots globally. This means ad-free users will soon see both longer and shorter ads on their favorite Netflix shows, along with ads in new categories like doing, enhanced financial services, and pharma products.