Later this year, Disney+ will celebrate its sixth anniversary. Over the years, the platform has undergone many changes, such as the introduction of Hulu, Star, and ESPN hubs and the addition of curated playlists.

But the main front page of Disney+ hasn’t really changed too much, with it still being just row after row of rectangles.  Last year, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke about improving their technology to improve the user experience better, which helps increase engagement and reduce churn.

Last summer, Disney announced that it had hired Adam Smith as the new chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN.  Adam previously worked at YouTube for many years and saw over the launch of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music.

Recently, during an investor’s Q&A session for the latest quarterly financial results, Disney CEO Bob Iger was asked what platform enhancements are coming to Disney+ in the next year, to which he replied:

Regarding the timing of the different technological advances that Adam and his team are working on, they’re actually starting to roll out already and will continue to throughout the next twelve months, but we’re not going to obviously stop at the end of the year. I wouldn’t really call out any one of them in terms of one of them having a greater impact than the others because it’s a collection of them. You mentioned paid sharing, that’s certainly one. Using technology more and more for personalization and essentially upping our game from an algorithm perspective, getting less out of our control or curation and more basically into the business of serving the consumer, what the consumer wants.

We’ve got some work to do internationally, particularly on the ad tier. Ad tech is also something that we’re working on, a variety of different AI initiatives going on. And these were also developing flagship. I’d say that of all of them, one of the things that we are very, very mindful of is that home screen or front screen or the first experience that consumers have has to be more dynamic. Ours was elegant looking, but fairly static in nature.

The more dynamic it is, the more people are drawn into it, the more people use it and the more people don’t basically close the app out and go elsewhere. That’s a big deal, but a lot going on. We’re still building his team out. And I’d say that by the end of the year, there’ll be significant progress made, but we’ve already had made some progress. We’ve made some progress already.

Roger’s Take:  Disney knows that in order to improve its engagement and reduce the churn of subscribers, it has to get people to watch more content.  Netflix and YouTube are masters of using algorithms to serve their users the content they want to watch, keeping them on their platforms longer.  Disney+ just offers a single one-size-fits-all homepage experience, which does not keep subscribers engaged.  How often are you shown a film or show on the Disney+ homepage that you are either not interested in or have already watched? 

This is also a key advantage for Disney, which is starting to consolidate its different streaming services.  They can invest more time and money into making a single platform the best it can be rather than tinkering with and updating half a dozen different platforms.  Also, it’s very obvious that the tech teams have been working on bringing in Hulu On Disney+, ESPN On Disney+ and curated playlists into the core Disney+ app in the US, while not giving any major updates to how Disney+ works internationally.

What do you think Disney+ needs to do to improve its front-page experience?  Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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