Disney+ · B2C · Disney's streaming service
Build your own event tracking, keep Adobe as a backup, then drop Adobe
~$1K/day in-house vs ~$33K/day for Adobe; Adobe removed within weeks
Workedanalytics-attribution
What they did
With 1.5 years of runway before launch, built one first-party clickstream system (Glimpse) as the only tracking integration in the app, normalized across devices, so data went only to Disney (simpler GDPR/consent, no vendor seeing volume). Because the team had never done it at this scale, also signed an Adobe contract and integrated it lightly so it could be pulled out. Compared both in the first weeks after launch, then removed Adobe. Event volume later grew 3-4x.
What happened
In the first couple of weeks Glimpse cost about $1,000/day end to end vs about $33,000/day for Adobe, and its data proved reliable, so Adobe was ripped out.
- Stage
- launch
- Effort
- ~300 engineers across teams; 1.5 years pre-launch
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building an Effective Data Product Strategy — Taylor Wells, News Corp“the reason was that we wanted to only have one integration within the app. We didn't want to rely on third parties, then it became kind of sticky in terms of GDPR and consent and things like that.”
“let's build it internally, but we've never done this before in this sense at Disney, so let's also, in the back, have a contract with Adobe and be integrating it lightly, but able to pull it out later, right?”
“And so, we were able to quickly say, "Let's rip this out, because the data is reliable, it's working, like we're confident in it."”
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