As competition in the streaming market heats up, so does the battle for subscribers. With Netflix leading the way with nearly 300 million subscribers, other competing services are scrambling to stay afloat.


Against this backdrop, Disney announced some impressive results at CES 2024. For the quarter of September through December 2024, or the last six months, Disney's global monthly active users (MAUs) averaged more than 157 million. This figure is based on Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ combined, of which 112 million are U.S. users.

Disney ad sales chief Rita Ferro addresses the crowd at Disney's 2024 upfront presentation


It's worth noting that this figure does not include subscribers to Disney+ Hotstar, which is available in India. For reference, Disney+ Hotstar had 35.9 million subscribers in the July-September 2024 quarter.


"Disney is uniquely positioned to deliver both world-class sports and entertainment content, and has the largest audience in ad-supported global streaming," said Rita Ferro, President, Global Advertising, Disney. "We wanted to be the first in the industry to provide greater transparency around the methodology used to estimate global ad-supported monthly active users," she added, expressing confidence in the measurement.

  • Unlike linear advertising, there is no industry standard methodology for measuring global streaming advertising audience size.
  • Disney Advertising set out to define a globally consistent approach and methodology to estimate ad-supported audience numbers.
  • The ad-supported MAU numbers are derived from active accounts across Disney’s streaming ecosystem (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+)* who have viewed ad-supported content continuously for more than 10 seconds.
  • Each active account is then multiplied by the number of estimated users per account (global average is 2.6 and it varies by application and region) to estimate the total number of users.
  • Multipliers are determined by first-party survey data representing subscribers in regions with an advertising tier.** This survey includes more than 13,000 individuals ages 18-64.
  • As an advertising industry leader focused on proving the power of our data, this is another step that delivers intentional and impactful results for brands – in a uniquely Disney way.


For comparison, Netflix reportedly has 70 million monthly ad-supported users and Roku has 90 million users across its platforms. Disney pointed out that unlike traditional real-time advertising, there is no standardized methodology for measuring global streaming ad audiences. In response, Facebook has launched an effort to establish a standardized approach and methodology for estimating ad-supported audiences.