Affected by sluggish growth and a shrinking global user base, Netflix quickly made plans to incorporate ads directly into its TV shows and movies. According to The New York Times, the streaming platform has changed its plans to inject ads into its content by the end of the year.

“Netflix has notified employees that the ad may run by the end of 2022,” the report said late Tuesday. Executives had planned to launch an ad-supported, lower-priced subscription tier “within the next year or two,” but that has now been pushed back to an earlier launch date.

According to the report, a recent note to employees said Netflix executives now aim to roll out the ad tier sometime in the last three months of 2022. The company will also announce new measures to combat password sharing by the end of the year.

Shares of streaming giant Netflix plummeted 20 per cent after reporting the loss of 200,000 paying subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, the first loss of subscribers in more than a decade. Additionally, Netflix is now forecasting a loss of 2 million paid subscribers globally in this year’s second quarter (Q2).

After reporting disastrous results for the March quarter, Netflix fired several seasoned journalists and writers who worked on its entertainment site Tudum, which only launched in December. Earlier this month, a shareholder lawsuit in the US accused Netflix of misleading investors that its subscriber growth had fallen in six months, sending its stock price sharply lower.