Disney Plus with ads will keep the breaks down to four minutes per hour

Image: Disney

According to reports from Variety and The Wall Street Journal, Disney Plus will run ads for four minutes on movies and shows that last less than an hour.

Variety points out that this would make Disney offer less ads per hour. NBC's Peacock runs no more than five minutes of ads for every hour of content, while HBO Max shows four minutes of ads per hour. Disney Plus will run anywhere from nine to 12 ads in one hour.

The company is taking a cautious approach to maintaining its family-friendly image. Variety reports that Disney won't accept ads from entertainment competitors if they have adult themes.

If ads are used by a kids profile, Disney will remove them from all shows. Disney will remove ads on shows geared toward a preschool audience even if a user doesn't have a kids profile, according to sources.

In March, Disney announced that it would launch a cheaper, ad-supported option in the US in late 2022. Disney Plus currently costs $7.99 a month without ads, but there are no details on how much the cheaper option will cost. The company added 7.9 million new subscribers in the last quarter and has 44 million subscribers in the US and Canada.

Despite still sitting at 74.58 million subscribers in the US and Canada, Netflix has shrunk as the subscriber count continues to grow. The streaming giant lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade last quarter, and it has already devised a few plans to get them back. According to a note to employees, there is a possibility of an ad-supported tier and a livestreaming option at some point this year. Reed Hastings, co-CEO of Netflix, has spoken about the need to crack down on password sharing in order to cash in on streaming freeloaders, which could come around the same time that the company rolls out an ad-supported tier.