The Disney and ITV partnership that sees each company providing a selection of titles for the other’s streaming service in the UK went live this week.
The arrangement presents a strong co-promotional opportunity for the two media owners.
“A Taste of Disney+” is a Disney-branded rail on ITVX that will be the only place where the selected titles appear in the UK outside Disney+.
There are no immediate plans to include new content in this branded content rail, but ITVX viewers can catch up on older seasons. Series one of The Bear is available, for instance, but viewers can only watch the other series on Disney+.
The precise windowing for content appearing in “A Taste of Disney+” will depend on the title.
Disney’s shows are being ingested into ITVX, so when someone clicks on a title they are watching from ITVX’s back end rather than deep-linking to Disney+.
When viewing Disney titles, users can expect some promo rolls for other Disney+ programmes or for the Disney+ service itself. They may also see calls to action to subscribe to Disney+, but there will not be sign-up buttons or deep links to facilitate that journey.
Disney and ITV to share content in new partnership
The number of titles involved from both parties means the partnership should be characterised as co-promotion rather than a change in digital distribution strategies. ITV is not expected to make more than a dozen titles available in the “A Taste of ITVX” promotional rail on Disney+ at any one time.
The two companies already license content from one another and those titles are not affected — they appear in the respective platforms outside the promotional rails.
“A Taste of ITVX” will present a range of genres and a mix of classic and contemporary content, skewing towards newer shows. It is seen as a chance to promote programme brands and current series using recently aired content. Love Island: All Stars, shown on ITVX earlier this year, is being used to promote the current series of Love Island, for example.
ITV Commercial will sell the advertising against “A Taste of Disney+” on ITVX as part of normal audience delivery (ITVX Premium is available for viewers who want to watch ad-free). Disney will sell the advertising against “A Taste of ITVX” on Disney+ standard with ads tier (one of its three UK subscription options).
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