Double The Ads To Lower The Cost Of Streaming, Says 36% of Americans

With the cost of streaming continuing to increase, many consumers are becoming more tolerant of ads. According to a new report, many consumers would be willing to tolerate even more ads if it resulted in lowering the cost of streaming even more.

Many streaming services offer the option to subscribe to an ad-free or an ad-supported plan, with the latter lowering the cost, and in some cases, significantly.

Take Netflix, for example. While the cheapest Standard with ads plan costs $8.99 a month (following the most recent price increase), the cheapest ad-free plan costs $19.99 a month, more than twice the price.

According to Bango‘s Subscription Signals 2026 report, the average American now spends $69 per month on 5.2 subscriptions. All of which led to 23% saying they’re now spending more on streaming than they can afford.

As part of the same survey, 36% of Americans said they would be willing to accept even more ads if it lowered the cost of a subscription. In fact, they would be willing to tolerate twice as many ads.

What’s more, younger viewers are seemingly even more willing to sit through ads to save money. For example, the percentage of those willing to accept more ads increased to 46% for Millennials and 49% for Gen Z.

Unsurprisingly, Apple TV users proved to be the most eager for ads, with 52% willing to accept ads if it lowered the cost.

As Apple has yet to launch an ad-supported plan, the entry-point for Apple TV is expensive compared to the cheapest subscription tiers (typically ad-supported) offered by many other services.

Still, even for those services that already offer ads, the option of more ads for a lower price point seemed just as popular.

For example, 48% of Disney+ users, 47% of HBO Max users, 44% of Netflix users, and 40% of Amazon Prime Video users, all said they would be willing to accept more ads if it lowers the cost.