With Netflix's ad levels, you never know what you're going to get

Clicking on something is a roll of the dice on Netflix's new ad tier: You never know how many ads you might have to sit through.

Netflix Basic with Ads is finally here, offering a cheap Netflix subscription at $6.99 per month with the tradeoff that you may have to watch some commercials with your movies and TV shows. I spent some time messing around with a new account on Tier on Thursday, and while the experience using Netflix was mostly the same, I had no idea how many commercials I'd have to watch.

Clicking on something is a roll of the dice on Netflix's new ad tier: You never know how many ads you might have to sit through.

Netflix says you can expect to see "an average of 4 to 5 minutes of commercials per hour." I had the same experience, but I was wondering when ads might appear. It's not like broadcast TV, where you know when and often, how many commercials you'll have to sit on before the show comes back. Here are some of the differences I experienced:

Every Netflix-branded show or movie I tried had an ad at the front, but a varying number of midroll ads.

There were no commercials in the community, Seinfeld and Grey's Anatomy

The three Netflix movies I tried only had commercials in the beginning but none in the middle

There were commercials in front of a space for the film Crazy, Stupid, Love and Midroll commercials.

The Italian job had three positions for front aid and midroll ads.

spider man had no ads

As for commercials, they're pretty much standard online video ads. With my brand new account, I was shown ads for things like cars, hotels, cruises, jewelry, and fragrances. Netflix says the ads are 15 or 30 seconds long, which matches my experience. You can pause them, but you can't skip them, although Netflix does help with how long the ad breaks in the upper-right corner of the screen.

One major drawback of the ad level is that some items are not available for viewing. Those shows and movies will be marked by a small red padlock in the upper right corner. If you watch it, you will not be able to watch the show.

You can click on things with padlocks. On the web, Netflix will take you to a new screen that lets you upgrade to a higher priced tier instantly with access to everything. On iOS, Netflix only suggests that you choose an ad-free plan, but doesn't directly point you to anything, possibly due to Apple's restrictive App Store rules.

Netflix is hinting that some things won't be available at the ad level due to licensing issues, so it's not a shock at all. In my brief time of ad level, I didn't find many padlocks, but there were a few surprises.

Arrested Development, which previously aired on Fox but received new seasons on Netflix, is completely unavailable to stream. Today four of the top 10 films in the US (including the top slot, The Bad Guys) have a red lock. And I saw a bunch of padlocks in search results for "classic movies" like Skyfall, 28 Days, and The Imitation Game. Since there's no real way to know if something isn't available until you search for it, it's a problem you'll have to live with if you opt for the ad level (unless there's some kind of Advertisement level). The list of feelings to be blocked is not included).

Netflix Basic with commercials is exactly what I expected: it's Netflix, with commercials. If that's something you can live with, and you're okay with other tradeoffs like 720p video quality and no offline downloads, then saving a few bucks with the cheaper tier might be worth it. Personally, I would stick with the no ads option as I already see enough ads on the internet.