Disney Is Losing the Engagement Wars
In case you missed the shocking news, The Walt Disney Company just made an AI deal.
While Hollywood enters meltdown mode, even the business world is taken aback.
ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
Nobody saw this coming, but they should have, as Disney had even reason to make a deal.
Simply stated, Disney is losing the engagement war. Here’s what we know.
The Battle for Engagement
chatgpt
Hundreds of millions of people use AI each and every week.
The most popular services like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini have become ubiquitous in our lives.
Disney+
We think the same of streaming, yet the numbers tell a different story.
After six years in operation, Disney+ claims 131.6 million subscribers.
Image: The Wall Street Journal
Importantly, not all of those subscribers use the service each week, as its engagement fluctuates.
So, even after all this time, Disney+ only manages a fraction of AI usage.
Photo:Rappler
Here’s the remarkable thing about that stat. ChatGPT debuted on November 30th, 2022.
That AI service is less than half the age of Disney+, yet its usage rate dwarfs that of a major streaming service.
Deadline
Disney isn’t the only company noticing this trend, either. Even Netflix is getting smoked.
According to Netflix’s final subscriber report at the end of 2024, it has 301.6 million subscribers.
Photo: Netflix
Google Gemini is currently accelerating its growth at an unprecedented rate.
As of last month, this AI claims 650 million monthly users. In other words, it’s twice as popular as Netflix.
Photo:seoclerk.com
That fact may blow your mind, but it’s not even the biggest story here.
AI usage is expanding so much that Gemini started the year with 100 million monthly users. Oh, and I’m rounding up to say 100 million. Yes, its usage has increased by a factor of 6.5.
Disney’s Engagement Struggles
Nielsen
Meanwhile, Disney has been stagnant for a while, and even Netflix’s growth has slowed significantly.
We can track this in a different way via Nielsen’s The Gauge metric, which tracks streaming usage.
Nielsen
At the start of the year, Disney’s streaming and linear properties gained 4.8 percent of the market share.
Meanwhile, YouTube TV was at 11.6 percent, and Netflix slotted under it at 8.2 percent.
Photo: Variety
Last month, Netflix fell to 8 percent while Disney held steady at 4.8 percent, which sounds good.
Well, it does until I mention that YouTube has increased to 12.9 percent. For my part, that makes perfect sense, as I watch YouTube more than anything else.
Since I write so often, I put background noise on my televisions. For instance, I recommend this:
Well, I recommend it as long as you’re not doing the Little Drummer Boy Challenge.
Disney fans may prefer this one instead:
While we can quibble over how much engagement they have, the reality is that most people use YouTube.
Computer World
Similarly, one out of every ten people on this planet uses AI at this point.
Why does that matter to Disney? These forms of content consumption are wrecking it.
Photo: DVC
For generations now, Disney content has dominated society, but it’s struggling in the modern era.
Simply stated, consumers have too much choice, and our eclectic nature has reached the forefront.
Photo: Computer Hope
Disney benefited from an age when niches weren’t a thing in content consumption.
That’s no longer the case. As we speak, you may be playing video games, generating videos, or listening to a podcast.
Getty
Since you have so many options on how to spend your free time, Disney is no longer the biggest fish in a small pond.
Unless Disney did something drastic – like make a deal with OpenAI – it was going to lose.
Photo: Wikimedia
As the logical outcome of this defeat, Disney would have become just another brand.
Then, they would have been susceptible to acquisition by one of the winners of the Engagement Wars.
The Odd Outcome of This Struggle
Walt Disney Company
Disney is spending an extraordinary amount of money on its content.
In 2025 and 2026, the company should average around $24 billion.
Photo: vecteezy.com
So, that’s $48 billion in two years on content that people aren’t prioritizing as much.
I’ve tracked this in the streaming ratings, which I’ll do again in just a moment.
Photo:Disneycoupon.jpg
Overall, Disney’s streaming bundle is performing quite well by industry standards.
However, the company is losing the engagement war to AI businesses.
Photo: Getty Images/Ringer illustration
You may not consider these companies as direct competition, but they are.
Anything that prevents you from consuming Disney content is a problem for Disney.
Families Streaming Disney+
Whether AI proves to be a fad or the next internet remains to be seen, but it’s an issue right now.
When faced with this data, Disney CEO Bob Iger recognized that he really had no choice.
Photo: Disney
Disney needed to commit to an AI presence to maintain its brand awareness.
Now, the company will receive a new form of engagement from a content-hungry user base.
Photo: Disney
I like this move for Disney overall, but I love it due to its necessity.
If Disney hadn’t been proactive here, it could have fallen waaaay behind, which would have been disastrous.
Photo: Disney
This move by no means guarantees that Disney will catch up in the engagement wars, but it’s a good start.
Nielsen Streaming Ratings
Photographer: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
As promised, here are the Nielsen Streaming Ratings for the week of November 10th-16th, 2025.
Overall, Disney had a better week than it had been doing lately. Here are the programs that charted:
Bingo, Bluey and Dad cheer as Dad guesses the toy Muffin wants for her birthday.
- Grey’s Anatomy – 853 million viewer minutes
- NCIS – 762 million viewer minutes
- Bluey – 759 million viewer minutes
- Bob’s Burgers – 713 million viewer minutes
- The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives – 651 million viewer minutes
- Law & Order – 535 million viewer minutes
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – 484 million viewer minutes
- Freakier Friday – 374 million viewer minutes
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps – 344 million viewer minutes
Photo: Disney
While some Christmas content charted for that week, none of Disney’s usuals did.
Still, the performance of Freakier Friday must please Disney officials.
Photo: Disney
Even so, when we compare these numbers to last year, there’s a trend here.
Disney’s Nielsen performances have generally declined year over year.
The Walt Disney Company
That’s the early warning signal that Disney is losing the engagement wars.
So, I think it’s smart that Iger just moved the battlefield to AI content creation.
Photo: MickeyBlog
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