On Wednesday, the Walt Disney Company DIS said that its streaming platforms have reached another milestone.
What Happened: The company's streaming platforms, Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, have amassed approximately 157 million monthly active users globally who engage with ad-supported content.
This figure includes 112 million users in the United States and represents an average over the past six months.
The update was shared during the annual CES tech conference in Las Vegas.
See Also: What’s Going On With FuboTV Stock After Disney Deal?
While traditional television has established methods for measuring viewership, the streaming industry lacks a standardized approach for gauging global advertising audiences.
Disney’s Advertising division has developed a methodology to estimate ad-supported audience numbers consistently worldwide.
It involves calculating active accounts across Disney’s streaming services that have viewed ad-supported content for more than 10 seconds.
Each active account is multiplied by the estimated number of users per account to determine the total user count. Users subscribing to multiple platforms may be counted more than once.
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Why It Matters: Disney’s achievement in the ad-supported streaming space is noteworthy, especially as competitors like Netflix Inc. NFLX and Amazon.com, Inc.'s AMZN Prime Video also expand their ad-supported tiers.
In November 2024, Netflix reported 70 million monthly users for its ad-supported tier. During the same time, it was reported that about 80% of Amazon Prime viewers have subscribed to the newly introduced ad-supported tier.
Disney’s fourth-quarter earnings, where the company reported a 6% increase in revenue, reached $22.57 billion. This growth was partly driven by gains in its streaming services, which ended the quarter with 174 million Disney+ Core and Hulu subscriptions.
Price Action: Disney’s stock closed Wednesday’s trading session down by 1.46%, settling at $109.76. However, in after-hours trading, the shares gained 1.18%, rising to $111.05, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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