Successfully Scaling Streaming Growth

Streaming is a constant balancing act. The landscape shifts quickly, competition is high, and expectations around performance don’t slow down.

At Disney+, that means we’re always looking at how to grow subscribers efficiently while continuing to support the content that drives engagement. It’s not just about scale. It’s about doing it in a way that’s sustainable

Over time it became clear that, yes, we needed to optimize campaigns better, but we also needed to rethink how we were optimizing in the first place.

‍Starting with the Reality

Our goal remains the same: we’re focused on driving profitable subscriber growth and supporting tune-in for new releases. But as our campaigns expanded across markets and channels, the amount of manual work required to keep everything running efficiently started to add up. Optimizations took time, and by the time adjustments were made, performance conditions had often already shifted. Speed was the issue, not data. 

Finding the Right Partner

Ultimately, that’s what led us to Yahoo DSP. We needed a platform that could support how we already think about programmatic, across display, video, CTV, and native, but also help us move faster and make better decisions in real time.

What stood out was the ability to build on top of that foundation, not just operate within it. It felt less like plugging into a system and more like working with a partner to improve how the system itself functions.

Where Yahoo Blueprint Made a Difference

We introduced Yahoo Blueprint Performance into our campaigns in August 2024. The value showed up pretty quickly. Blueprint processes significantly more data signals than we could reasonably manage on our own and shortens the time between signal and action. That meant bids, budgets, and optimizations were adjusting in a way that was both faster and more consistent.

It also removed a lot of the guesswork, and instead of constantly monitoring and manually adjusting, our teams could rely on a system that was learning and adapting in real time. And importantly, we still had visibility into what was happening and why.

What Changed

The most immediate impact was operational. Manual optimizations that once required constant monitoring and adjustment were significantly reduced, giving our teams more time to focus on strategy, creative, and higher-value planning. That shift changed how campaigns were managed day to day, with less time spent reacting and more time spent guiding performance.

At the same time, performance improved. We saw a 12% improvement in CPA and more than a 15% lift in eCPM efficiency. That wasn’t the result of a single change, but of a system that was better at identifying where to spend and where not to, with more attuned oversight and management by our teams. Campaigns became more responsive, and wasted impressions decreased.

Scaling Globally

Once we saw that consistency, expanding was the necessary, logical next step. What started in a smaller set of campaigns is now rolled out more broadly across markets. The benefit of having a system like this is that it creates a level of consistency in how we approach optimization, even as campaigns vary by region or objective. It doesn’t remove flexibility, it just makes it easier to scale what’s working.

What This Means for Marketers

• If you’re still relying heavily on manual optimization, it’s worth asking how much that’s actually costing you in missed opportunities
• Speed matters more than ever, and the ability to react quickly often makes the difference
• Automation is most useful when it’s transparent and controllable
• The right partner should help you improve how you work, not just where you run

The Takeaway

For our team at Disney, this work centered on improving how performance is managed across campaigns at scale. By introducing a more adaptive system through Yahoo DSP and Yahoo Blueprint Performance, we created a setup that responds more quickly to change, reduces manual strain on teams, and allows for more consistent optimization across markets.

That foundation gives us greater confidence as we continue to scale. In a category like streaming, where conditions shift quickly and competition remains high, having a system that can keep up is critical to sustaining growth over time.