Last week, we published a piece about the challenges facing Netflix moving forward and the innovations and strategies it can implement to stay ahead of the competition. One such suggestion was to continue investing heavily in animation and young adult content because, as Netflix itself noted last year, “about 60 percent of Netflix’s global audience watches the service’s content for children and families on a monthly basis.”
The problem with this approach is that Netflix now faces a bulldog of an opponent in this lane: Disney+. The Mouse House’s streamer was engineered to be a family friendly goldmine for prospective SVOD customers and the numbers bear that out. Not only has Disney+ raced out to a staggering 28.6 million subscribers overall since its November launch (nearly half of Netflix’s 60 million North American subs), but it’s also dominating its key demographic target.
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As many as 50 percent of U.S. internet users with children under 10 in their households have already subscribed to the Disney+ streaming service, according to a report from UK market research firm Ampere Analysis, per Deadline. In fact, 55 percent of Disney+’s subscriptions are households with children. Attracting and engaging its core target demo is crucial for Disney+’s success, but it’s not the only area in which the service is gaining ground.
Thanks to the high-demand for live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian and anticipation for blockbuster Marvel miniseries such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision, more than four in 10 (41 percent) of 18- to 24-year-olds say they already have access to the service, according to the Ampere report. While Disney+ may never again accrue nearly 30 million subscribers in a single quarter, the expectation is for another sign-up surge ahead of Marvel’s planned releases later this year. The 18-34 demographic composes the bulk of streaming’s audience and the demo most willing to subscribe to more than one service.
Netflix is an analytics-driven company that uses data to determine strategy. Specifically, it pairs genre tags with a user’s viewing history to form “taste clusters” to better develop and market content to particular preferences. Disney+ is approaching its key taste cluster from a macro perspective and utilizing its family-friendly DNA as a massive net for a growing subscriber demographic.
