Four months after Disney+ launched its ad-supported plan, it’s finally available on Roku. It’s unclear if Disney and Roku sat down and hammered out a deal or not, but nonetheless, it is now available.
This means that Roku users can now use Disney+ with or without ads on the platform. As well as any combination of the Disney+ bundle.
Disney nor Roku has offered any details since December about this. So this just popped up out of nowhere on Roku’s platform. Now, Roku users have even more ways to watch Disney+ than ever before. Which is definitely good to see.
Disney+ with Ads should boost its subscriber numbers
With Disney+ launching its ad-supported plan, it should grow its subscribers even more than it had already done so. Disney+ launched just a few months before the pandemic started. Which led them to picking up a ton of subscribers. Surpassing their five-year goals in just a few months. Though, since the pandemic ended, many have canceled Disney+. So that’s where the ads versions comes into play.
With this version of Disney+, the company should bring in more money from Ads, and also be able to bring in more subscribers. Back in March, a report showed that about 20% of its signups for Disney+ were for the ads tier, back in December. Which means that ti is outperforming other AVOD offerings from Netflix and HBO MAX, in their first 30 days on the market. That is quite impressive for Disney.
So how did this get resolved? Well, it’s likely that Disney gave Roku what it was looking for. Which is likely a cut of the ad revenue. Which is what Roku does with other apps that show ads on its platform. Remember that Roku sells its products basically at cost. So they aren’t making money on hardware. Where they make money is ads. Whether that be on the Roku Channel, or from other apps on the platform.