Child-orientated advertising is being weighed up as a potential direction for the Disney+ streaming platform, according to Disney CEO Bob Chapek.
As it stands, Disney+ is an ad-free streaming platform, bringing it in line with both Netflix and Amazon, a model which sees customers paying a subscription fee which serves as a means to viewing the streamer’s many wares without the hassle of advertising. However, according to Disney CEO Bob Chapek, that could yet change.
During a recent conference call with investors, Chapek revealed that he is weighing up the idea of bringing targeted advertising to the platform, following the company seeing positive results with the approach on their US-based sister streaming platform, Hulu.
Here are Chapek’s comments:
“…For example, Disney+ has a lot of kids that watch it, and the taste for us to consider advertising on something like Disney+ would be completely different than it might be on a Hulu. So then again, you take that individual, no one size fits all type approach that we are looking at across the world. And you say where do we have that opportunity? Where do we not have that opportunity? And then how does that change over time as we look at combining things or keeping things separate à la carte? And so, all this is malleable. Again, it’s soft clay right now. And we are very pleased with what we are seeing with addressable advertising on Hulu”.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that Hulu offers several consumer plans, not all of which are ad-supported, so this doesn’t automatically mean that adverts would be applied to all Disney+ subscriptions. Instead, it’s more likely that there would be flexible subscription options to suit consumer tastes. Unlike Hulu, advertising on Disney+ would also present the company with a unique hurdle, that being the legislation in place to protect children from advertising. In the UK, this is regulated by the Advertising Standards Agency.
Whilst it’s by no means a given at this point, Disney is no slouch at leveraging its screen output into extra revenue, whether its retail stores or theme parks, and we get the feeling that Disney+ will be no different. For now, it’s a case of watch this space. Once the auto-playing video has stopped anyway.
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