Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings says he didn't believe in ad-supported tier years ago

Reed Hastings admitted Wednesday that Netflix Inc. should have launched an ad-supported tier years ago.

During an interview at the New York Times Dealbook conference, the co-founder and co-CEO of Netflix said he thought advertising was wrong for years.

I didn't believe in the ad-supported tactic for us. He said that he was wrong about that, and he told moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin. Hulu proved that you could do that at scale and offer customers lower prices. I wish we had flipped a few years earlier on that, but we'll catch up. After years of dismissing calls to bring advertising to Netflix, the streaming-video company added a cheaper, ad-supported tier in October in an effort to revive stagnant user growth.

Hastings said he had been too focused on how Facebook and Google were disrupting the advertising market.

He said that there was a lot of TV advertising that couldn't find the viewers because the 18 -- 49 segment had moved on and was not watching linear TV. We didn't have to steal advertising revenue. It was coming into the connected TV. The inventory was there. Netflix shares NFLX have fallen about 50% year to date but have gained 37% over the past three months compared to the S&P 500 s SPX, 14% decline in 2022 and 3% gain over the past three months.

Hastings also heaped praise on Tesla Inc. TSLA, CEO Elon Musk, who called him the bravest, most creative person on the planet. Hastings said he is 100 percent convinced that he is trying to help the world, and that he has spent the past month trolling his critics on Twitter and gutting the social-media company's workforce.