zlacker

Right, but neither of these functions explains the circularity: if Netflix loses money on every paying subscriber versus the "ad watching sucker" demographic, why spend billions of dollars a year[1] advertising your paid plans?

(Maybe I'm being too literal here -- it'd be fair to argue that Netflix mostly just advertises their shows, not the plans themselves directly.)

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/688525/netflix-ad-expens...

>>woodru+(OP)
Where do they say they lose money on ad free paying subs? Maybe they make less profit than on free ad users.

>>bellta+C2
Sorry, bad phrasing -- they don't lose money in an absolute sense, but make less on full-paying users than ad-watching ones.

>>woodru+(OP)
Some advertising of the ad-free paid plans is good because it takes the segment of customers who will not tolerate ads and gives them an option, rather than lose them.

>>woodru+I2
media is always about network effects. you want to talk to your friends about big shows. that only works if they watch the big shows, ad-free or not.