Netflix gives Canadian viewers the option of a cheaper monthly subscription plan - as long as they are willing to sit through commercial breaks. The streaming giant celebrated on November 1st the launch of the new ad-supported streaming tier in Canada for $5.99 per month. The price is much lower than Netflix's ad-free plans, which start at $9.99 and go up to $20.99 per month. In exchange for the savings, Netflix said subscribers would watch an average of four to five minutes of ads per hour, placed before and during TV shows and movies. Also, Netflix said its current plan prices will not be affected by the introduction of the ad tier. This experience also deviates from Netflix's years-long insistence that it would never move away from commercial breaks during its programs, an option the company said helped build its reputation. But competition in the streaming space has intensified in recent years with the newcomer Disney Plus quickly moving into the company's position as the most popular streaming service. Wall Street analysts raised concerns earlier this year about Netflix's subscriber numbers continuing to decline if more people switched to alternative platforms. However, not everything in the Netflix library will be available on the ad tier, and subscribers will not have the option to download titles for offline viewing. Peters said these restrictions are due to licensing agreements with distributors and will vary by country. He estimated that about five to ten percent of TV shows and movies on the higher-priced tiers will be missing from the ad tier. Also, the ad break experience will be similar to what viewers have seen on other platforms, including Bell Media's CTV live streaming library.

Before the program starts, a limited number of 15 and 30-second ads will run, while during the show, there will be a fade-out to a commercial at natural narrative breaks. In the press conference, Netflix executives used an example from "Emily in Paris" where the commercial break was placed between the end of a conversation at a restaurant and the establishing shot of a new scene in the streets of Paris. Additionally, Netflix movies will follow a slightly different approach aimed at "preserving the cinematic model" for new titles, according to Peters. Instead of placing commercials inside the movie, recent releases will only have pre-roll ads, while ads during playback will be introduced after the title has been available for an unspecified period of time.

In the same vein, ads will ultimately be targeted through user profile details that will require people, upon registration, to provide their birth date and gender—with options for male, female, or prefer not to say/no preference. However, executives said ads will target only gender and not the more specific demographic characteristics of users at launch. In the United States, many of Netflix’s competitors have already launched ad-supported tiers that trade off occasional commercial breaks for a lower subscription price.