While Disney+ is preparing its arrival on the AVoD market, Netflix is being shy, without however ruling out launching itself in the more or less distant future. It has to be said that ad-supported streaming appeals to American audiences.
A few days after Disney+’s announcement concerning the arrival of a less expensive offer but including advertisements, Netflix in turn clarified its position on the subject. While historically, the Los Gatos firm seemed rather opposed to this system, which is more commonly called AVoD, things seem to have changed. During a professional conference, its technical director, Spencer Neumann, hinted that if Netflix did not plan in the short term to engage in this field, nothing was excluded in the future.
“To be clear, we are not religiously opposed to advertising.“, he thus declared, adding that it was not necessary “never say never“even though the current subscription model has paid off so far.”It’s hard to ignore what the competition is doing, but that kind of operation doesn’t make sense to us right now..”
AVoD overshadows traditional streaming
As a reminder, Disney+ is far from being the first to launch into AVoD, even if this practice remains very much in the minority in France. Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock have already taken the plunge across the Atlantic. By opening up to this kind of practice low costthe rivals of Netflix “lose a lot of moneyAccording to some studies, AVoD has however surpassed traditional SVoD (subscription streaming practiced by Netflix) in the United States in terms of viewing time.
It is no coincidence that one of the voices having welcomed the decision of Disney + is that of Bob Bakish, the boss of Paramount (ex-ViacomCBS), who sees it “validation of this strategy” that Paramount+ also uses. In France, only a few specific platforms such as Mango and Pluto TV or developed by television groups such as TF1, M6 or Altice offer AVoD. It must be said that the French public does not support the influx of advertisements in its programs, unlike Americans, who have long been accustomed to countless cuts of their favorite series and films.