Hulu on Disney+ Officially Launches for US Bundle Customers; Disney Reveals Royal Name for New App Color

For nearly a full year, Disney has been building to a “one-app experience” that will bring together the capabilities of the company’s signature streaming services Hulu and Disney+. After launching a public beta test in December, on Wednesday, the entertainment giant officially unveiled Hulu on Disney+. The new experience integrates thousands of titles normally found on Hulu into the Disney+ platform and is available to Disney Bundle subscribers who have access to the two services individually.

Key Details:

• After three months of beta testing, Hulu on Disney+ is officially live for all U.S. bundle subscribers.
• The goal of the integration is to engage and retain consumers, which Disney reports occurred during the beta period.
• The Disney+ logo now features a new color called “Aurora” that blends both the streamer’s original blue and Hulu’s green.

This new one-app experience is now available to all Disney Bundle subscribers in the United States. Inside the Disney+ platform, these customers will now be able to see Hulu titles integrated into all aspects of the service, in addition to a dedicated Hulu hub. The general entertainment titles will now be found across Disney+’s recommendations, collections, and various carousels with the goal of making it easier to find content from both branches of the company’s extensive streaming libraries.

“What’s thrilling about the full launch of Hulu on Disney+ is we’re reducing friction for Bundle subscribers,” Disney’s direct-to-consumer president Joe Earley said. “During the beta, the Hulu content was purposefully isolated to the Hulu Hub, but now it will be fully integrated into Bundle subscribers’ homepages.”

As previously reported, not all content currently found on Hulu will make its way over to Disney+. Licensing agreements for certain on-demand titles limit the distribution of shows and movies to just Hulu, and the next-day streaming rights of shows from non-Disney-owned networks are Hulu exclusives. However, the Hulu original films and series are now available on Disney+ and Earley says the reason for the move was “engagement, retention and happy, happy subscribers.”

Disney has long sought to leverage its multiple streaming products to keep customers subscribed. The Disney Bundle has been a successful tool in retaining consumers by offering steep discounts to Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ for subscribing to more than one. Hulu on Disney+ is the next evolution in this strategy as Earley believes that the value proposition of the Disney Bundle increases, not only because of the extra content but also by removing the pain point of viewers having to toggle back and forth to watch shows on the disparate platforms.

In January, Disney’s global advertising president Rita Ferro said that the Hulu on Disney+ beta tests had “far exceeded every metric we had planned for it.” The goal of every streaming service is to keep customers so engaged with the product that it becomes unthinkable to even consider canceling the service. By making it easier to enjoy popular new and legacy titles, Disney is making it more likely that customers will stick around for longer than they would if everything remained separate.

“It’s going to be exciting for titles like ‘The Bear,’ ‘Shōgun,’ and ‘Only Murders in the Building,’ Earley said. ‘During the beta, we saw these titles performing really well with subscribers who typically had been watching more Disney+ content. I can only imagine what’s going to happen now with increased discoverability and integration on the homepage.”

From the launch of the beta period through this week, Disney reports that Disney+ customers have taken advantage of the Hulu integration by expanding their watch histories to include the adult animation, prestige dramas, and comedies that previously could only be found on Hulu. This shows that the integration is having the desired effect of keeping customers engaged with the added breadth of content that Hulu provides.

For subscribers who came to the service following the launch of the testing, they are watching more Hulu on Disney+ titles than the existing Bundle subscribers, showing that the allure of a more integrated streaming bundle is working to attract new customers.

According to Disney Entertainment and ESPN’s president and CTO Aaron LaBerge, the behind-the-scenes steps taken to make this integration possible were significant. He said that there are a number of product and technology elements that users won’t see that play a role in both how the streamer works now, but also how it will adapt and change in the future.

“This launch represents the most extensive technical advancement to Disney+ and our streaming platform since we launched Disney+ over four years ago,” he said. “As is often the case, making something simple, elegant, and easy for consumers can be quite complex behind the scenes.”

As The Streamable noted earlier this week, the Disney+ logo has changed to reflect the added content. Gone is the traditional Disney blue and in its place is a new color called “Aurora.” It blends the legacy blue with Hulu’s signature green color to reflect the histories of both streaming services.

“The color is named Aurora, both for the aurora borealis, but also as an homage to Princess Aurora,” Earley said. “It’s beautiful, a bit more adult, and signals a change.”

With the nod to one of Disney’s iconic princesses, just because Disney+ includes more adult, general entertainment content than it ever has before, doesn’t mean that it is abandoning its family-friendly origins. One of the reasons that the company held a three-month public beta testing period is because it wanted to give adults time to properly set up content restrictions on their children’s individual profiles.

“We know that consumers want ‘kid time,’ ‘we time,’ and ‘me time,’” said Earley. “Hulu on Disney+ now offers all of that and gives viewers options for their experience with parental controls and content settings.”