Disney reveals 157 million monthly active users worldwide for ad-supported tiers

Disney is offering advertisers levels of joy with its latest ad-supported product. streaming Numbers.

Today, at its 5th annual Technology and Data Showcase at THESEthe company’s president of global advertising, Rita Ferro, announced that the company has reached approximately 157 million monthly active users worldwide, including 112 million domestically, on average per month over the past six months.

The company noted that these numbers are cumulative across its streaming portfolio. In addition to the numbers, Disney also shared its calculation methodology.

“Disney sits at the intersection of world-class sports and entertainment content, with the most profitable audiences in large-scale ad-supported global streaming,” Ferro said in a statement. “We wanted to be the first to provide our industry with greater transparency in the methodology used to estimate our engaged and ad-supported global monthly active users.”

According to the company, ad-supported MAU numbers are derived from active accounts in Disney’s streaming ecosystem (Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+) that have viewed ad-supported content continuously for more than 10 seconds. (The company said estimated active users are added in apps without deduplication.)

Additionally, each active account is multiplied by the estimated number of users per account, with the global average being 2.6, although this varies by app and region. From there, Disney estimates the total number of users.

The company also noted that multipliers are determined by first-party survey data representing subscribers in ad-tiered regions, and its figures do not include Hotstar.

With this announcement, Disney’s advertising plans are currently ahead of Netflix, which told ADWEEK last year that its advertising level had reached 70 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, Amazon, which rolled out its ad-supported Prime Video tier to all of its users last year, says its monthly ad-supported audience is over 275 million in the United States through its owned and operated properties and third-party publishers.

Speaking to ADWEEK last month about what to expect in the coming year of Disney AdvertisingFerro stressed the importance of transparency around monthly active users.

“Consistency around the definition will be very important because I think some people use subscriber numbers, and others use account numbers as monthly active users,” Ferro said. “I think that’s the challenge of ensuring consistency across all of our platforms, ensuring that we can define what that is and that it’s a valid metric for our marketing partners.”

The advertising president also said the company is seeing steady growth across its advertising plans, with more than half of new users regularly opting for the ad-supported tiers.

“We know that more than 50% of people who sign up for Disney+ choose the ad tier,” Ferro said. “The number fluctuates, but it’s certainly above 50% consistently from month to month.”