When Disney Plus launches, and you log in, you may find yourself greeted by ads for Starz. No, Disney doesn’t own Starz, but there’s a very good reason they are there.
In the past years, Disney had licensed its content out to many companies and platforms. As Disney Plus began to take shape, the company had to go around and negotiate some of that content back to its control. Starz, in particular, was sitting on some key content in the form of movies like Star Wars The Force Awakens.
To get that content back, Disney has agreed to run ads for the Starz cable channel as well as its on-demand service. The ads will appear on the login pages of Disney Plus and ESPN Plus, web pages for the services, and the Android apps. They will not, however, appear within the services, and won’t be used as anything like pre-show ads.
No word on what will happen in countries where Starz is not available.
As trades go, it’s not a completely unreasonable agreement. Disney got back some content that people would definitely think should be included, and Starz gets a ton of ad impressions.
Disney Plus will launch on Nov. 12 with a gigantic launch day list of content. Be sure to make your streaming plans in advance!
