Netflix Set For Slowest Revenue Growth As Ad Plan Struggles To Gain Traction

Netflix is expected to report its slowest quarterly revenue growth on Thursday as its ad-supported plan struggles to attract customers in the saturating U.S. market, which could pressure the company to pull back on content spending this year. Reuters reports: The streaming pioneer has been reeling under strained consumer spending, rising costs of financing production and increased competition from Disney+ and Amazon Prime. It had pinned its hopes on the launch of the ad-supported tier, but analysts say they have not seen a burst of subscriptions.

The company is expected to have added 4.5 million subscribers in the fourth quarter - the lowest addition for the holiday period since 2014. It added 8.3 million subscribers a year ago. The $6.99 per month ad-supported plan does not have access to all titles and is not cheap enough to win over significant numbers of customers in the United States and Canada, analysts say. That is likely to draw focus on Netflix's aggressive content spending, which finance chief Spencer Neumann said in July would total about $17 billion annually for the next couple of years.

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