Disney+ Working on New Features to Boost Engagement as YouTube Pulls Attention of Young Viewers
Disney+ Working on New Features to Boost Engagement as YouTube Pulls Attention of Young Viewers
Live channels, new content recommendation algorithms and other features meant to boost engagement could be headed to Disney+ soon.
Disney+ isn’t resting on a strong first-quarter earnings report. The streaming service has designs to be profitable by the end of this year and is pursuing numerous strategies to boost viewership. It has already rolled out a huge selection of content from Hulu for customers who subscribe to both services, and will introduce sports from ESPN later this year. Now, a new report from The Wall Street Journal offers more details on Disney’s plans to boost engagement with its streamer, and numbers reported by Business Insider show that those upgrades are coming at a time when Disney is losing the attention of its tried and true core audience: kids.
Key Details:
- Disney+ is increasingly focused on raising the “hours per subscriber” spent on its platform.
- Disney is at work on live streaming channels, better content recommendations, and other tactics to help raise this number.
- According to Nielsen, kids aged 2 to 11 watched three times as much content on YouTube as they did on Disney+ in April.
According to WSJ’s reporting, Disney is internally focused on a specific engagement metric known as “hours per subscriber.” The mission is to raise this number, which is logical considering the precipitate rise in the number of customers who cancel a streaming subscription after watching only one or two titles. The more that streamers can keep viewers engaged, the likelier they are to remain customers for the long term.
To help it accomplish this goal, Disney is planning some new features that it hopes will get audiences using its platforms more frequently and for longer periods of time. A new algorithm to provide better content recommendations is in the works, along with customized promotional art for new titles based on a user’s viewing history. Disney+ could also begin emailing viewers who start a show but don’t finish it to remind them to keep watching.
All of these changes are in addition to the live-streaming channels that Disney+ is believed to be developing. In April, reports indicated that Disney was working on channels themed after its most popular content, such as the Marvel and Star Wars universes. These channels would play the next title automatically once a given show or movie is finished, allowing viewers to have a more “lean-back” type of experience instead of forcing them to constantly decide what they’ll watch next.
Are Disney’s Engagement-Boosting Efforts Too Little, Too Late?
As Business Insider reports, the move to try and augment engagement on Disney+ is coming at a time when Disney is losing its viewership monopoly with kids. The report cites data from Nielsen that found that kids much prefer the short-form videos on YouTube to anything that they can find with on-demand streamers like Disney+. In April, Nielsen estimated that children aged 2-11 watched three times as much content on YouTube as they did on Disney+. In 2022, Disney+ revealed that over 60% of its customer base was comprised of adults with no children in their homes.
The news gets even worse for Disney’s linear channels that are geared specifically towards kids. The Disney Channel got nearly 2 million average daily primetime viewers in 2014, good for a spot in the ratings top 10. But its popularity has plummeted, and now sees an average of 132,000 daily primetime viewers, which ranks it at No. 80 among its peers.
Those numbers point to the inescapable conclusion that Disney has to do something to grow its engagement numbers, either among kids or adults. One step that might be part of this strategy was Disney’s decision to release a series of “Bluey” mini-episodes beginning earlier this month. Bringing in younger viewers will likely help Disney+ boost its engagement metrics more quickly than any other option since parents are often likely to try to find something to watch on a service that their kids like, rather than having to pay for multiple more adult-focused platforms.
A company like Disney has every excuse to be struggling financially, with the downturn in linear TV revenues, the increasing cost of live sports rights, and the continuing frailty of box-office returns on new movies. But despite these challenges, CEO Bob Iger appears to have the company heading in the right direction, but boosting engagement on Disney+ will be key in the coming years, especially among kids.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”