Disney+ · B2C · Disney's streaming service
Group viewers by household, like parents or single adults, not by fan type
Household groups predicted behavior better; over half the audience were single adults
Workedanalytics-attributionpositioning-niche
What they did
Executives assumed buckets like Star Wars/Marvel super fans or Disney animation fans. Data science and analytics teams were given room to explore and found groups such as parents with young kids, parents with older kids, adult couples, single adults and teens shared more behavior patterns, and the team reoriented around them.
What happened
Guest says household-type groups predicted behavior and resonance better than fandom buckets; the data also showed more than half the audience were single adults, not the kids the service was assumed to be for.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building an Effective Data Product Strategy — Taylor Wells, News Corp“that's where we were able to reorient and say, "Hey, the data science teams, the data analytics teams, they're finding that these buckets actually make more sense in terms of what expected behavior will happen or what they'll resonate with based on tranches like parents with kids, parents with young kids, parents with older kids, adult couples, single adults, teens”
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- Disney+: Log one generic 'button clicked' event with keys, not a new event per featureGuest says it avoided costly renames and merges; still in use years later
- Disney+: Email the boss three bullet points by noon each day instead of dashboardsThe president stopped needing dashboards; no numbers
- Disney+: Move a show with near-100% completion up from the last row of the home screen
- RevenueCat: Start on Amplitude; add a data pipeline once product changes break your definitionsCo-host says it smoothed definition changes for data users; no numbers
- Dump app event logs into a plain SQL database instead of buying analyticsToo hard to explore, so nobody asked questions; moved back to Mixpanel
- Buy analytics tools first, but set dates to decide whether to switchGuest says companies without checkpoints get stuck with rising vendor costs; no numbers