Disney uses streamer integration to rebuild its content library

The process of adding direct Hulu integration with Disney+ required moving and integrating with over 100,000 assets.

An article in The Verge, which includes insight from Chris Lawson, the EVP of content operations, takes a deep dive into the undertaking:

• Hulu uses a different set of technology to host and stream its video, which required all of Hulu’s assets to be re-encoded. Disney opted to take things a step farther, however, and is building out a new shared content library system for both services to use. This will result in consistent encoding and standardized metadata conventions.
• Content is provided in a variety of formats and with different sets of metadata, depending on the source, so this all had to be considered. The full files of episodes and movies are actually only part of the 100,000 figure, however, there’s also creative assets used within the UI as well in multiplatform marketing efforts. 
• Disney+ requires up to twice as many creative and marketing assets for each title as Hulu did, so part of the integration included adapting designs used for Hulu into Disney+’s standards. Going forward, associated content will be designed using Disney’s more extensive requirements. 
• Disney is in the earlier phases of building out more features based on the combined metadata standards, which allow for more robust search and recommendations. This data is also being run through various machine learning technologies for better-combined suggestions (so yes, what you watch on one service will affect what is recommended on the other).
• Disney is also looking to the future and sees the integration of these two major brands as a possible starting point to how the entire company approaches its content and IP. The Verge piece mentions the possibility of Disney being able to recommend theme park experiences to users based on their viewing habits.
• Elsewhere, Disney has also been working to unify how users authenticate across all of its brands, including Disney+ and Hulu. These efforts will prove useful in letting the company tie data to specific user profiles, a key part of building its data warehouse and delivering more relevant advertising experiences to viewers and marketers.