Netflix sign-up data reveals how many people are actually choosing the ad-supported subscription option. Starting life as a DVD rental business, Netflix is now a leader in the world of streaming, offering original and licensed movies and TV shows to millions of subscribers around the world.

Though Netflix has offered multiple subscription tiers for years, the company introduced a new ad-supported tier in 2022. Dubbed “Basic with Ads,” this tier is available to users at a lower price point of $7.99 per month, compared to the Standard tier’s $17.99 price and Premium’s $24.99 price.

Per Antenna (via Bloomberg), new data now makes clear that roughly half of the people who signed up for Netflix in 2025 have opted for the ad-supported tier. This is an increase from 2024, which featured only about 40% signing up for the ad tier, and 2023, which featured only about 20%. Check out a tweet from Lucas Shaw below, which features a graph of the Antenna data:

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What This Means For Netflix

Streaming Is Evolving

Though cable and broadcast TV used to be the dominant means of consuming TV shows and movies, streaming has now taken the lead. Both traditional forms of TV featured commercial breaks, and one of the novelties and benefits of streaming was that it offered movies and TV shows ad-free.

Over the last few years, however, ad-supported tiers have become popular offerings at most major streamers, not just Netflix. Disney+ and Hulu offer ad-supported tiers, as does HBO Max, among others. Prime Video, too, has introduced ads into its standard tier, with ad-free streaming now a higher-priced tier that users must opt into.

Streaming, then, is starting to exhibit many of the qualities of traditional TV, suggesting a cyclical nature to its evolution. Ad-supported tiers provide companies like Netflix with additional means of generating revenue as new subscriber numbers start to plateau, and the data suggests these tiers are here to stay.

The data in the graph above suggests a clear trend: ad-supported tier subscribers are going up. It’s entirely possible that 2026 and 2027 will see the number of new users subscribing to this tier go up even further, surpᴀssing the other ad-free tiers, potentially by a considerable margin.

Our Take On Netflix’s Ad-Supported Tier Growth

Why This Trend Makes A Lot Of Sense

For avid watchers of movies and TV shows, it’s certainly not unusual to be subscribed to multiple streaming services at once to keep up-to-date with the latest releases, like Squid Game season 3. With the numerous price hikes in recent years across most major streamers, however, having multiple active subscriptions has become increasingly expensive.

Ad-supported tiers give users access to the same content at a lower price point. Enduring ads may have once felt like a thing of the past, but it could eventually become the norm once more as premium tiers simply become too expensive for the average consumer.

It’s not surprising to see the growth of this particular tier at Netflix, and it’s likely that other streamers are experiencing similar results. How this shapes the future of streaming remains to be seen, but ads are evidently not going anywhere.

Source: Antenna (via Lucas Shaw and Bloomberg)