Yeah this is fine, it may/should sign up certain demographic of users. It doesn't fix what's wrong with Netflix at the core. Netflix doesn't have a core value proposition anymore. The closest to that is "mediocre secondary content for filler viewing", which is how I used to use it. Even that has such low value that I just do something else instead.

What Netflix used to be was a service that understood my tastes and could surface tailored content in a sea of choices and noise. They've continually dumbed-down their recommendations system to "here's what others are watching" and showing old popular content that I've already watched and rated.

What I would like from Netflix is to be able to serve the long tail of content and match it with viewers interested in it. They can and should still produce high quality original content that can draw in subscribers interested in specific series. What is useless in the midst of so many other choices is a large volume of mediocre mainstream content that is not precisely recommended. Having lots of non-mainstream hit-or-miss content and serving it to viewers that it hits with would be awesome.

Having it as a separate (presumably cheaper) tier is fine I guess. But the minute they make it so that I have to watch ads, they can count on losing at least one more subscriber.

Isn't it the converse: they'll add ads, then lose more users, and then have their stock plummet more?

do this with piggybacks, if you do this for paid accounts then you start to look alot like cable, or satellite service