Disney Plus’ Cheaper Tier With Ads Set to Guard Its Family-Friendly Image

    
    Sarah Tew/CNET
    

    Disney Plus?cheaper, ad-supported tier is being designed to safeguard the service’s family-friendly image. The company said Tuesday that the service won’t run any advertising related to politics or alcohol and will keep ads out of sight of preschoolers when it launches in the US late this year.
    At the tier’s launch, profiles sets up for preschool-age viewers won’t have any advertising, and programs aimed at preschool audiences will forsake ads regardless of the profile that’s playing the programming. Disney’s parental controls allow for default profiles that include all the content available on the service, as well as kids profiles that can be finetuned by age.?
    Disney Plus’ ad-supported subscriptions also will aim to average four minutes of advertising per hour, according to the company. That’s less than the amount of commercials that run on traditional TV networks, and it’s competitive with the so-called “ad load” of?rival HBO Max’s ad-based tier.?

Disney hasn’t specified a price for the ad-supported tier yet, nor has it confirmed whether the price of the current, ad-free subscription will stay the same. Disney’s CEO has hinted that price hikes for the ad-free tier may be coming. In the US, Disney’s ad-free subscription is currently $8 a month.?
    Adding a cheaper option for Disney Plus would make it easier for price-sensitive people to sign up, especially as inflation crimps consumers’ wallets and after the swelling ranks of streaming services has upped the number that people must consider adding to their monthly budgets. Services offering an ad-supported tier that’s cheaper (or even free) is trending to become the industry norm, with even Netflix pursuing one after years of rejecting the idea.?
    The news was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal and Variety.?
    Read more: Disney Plus: When and How to Stream Eternals, Turning Red and Everything Else