Disney brings playable ‘advergames’ to Hulu and ESPN

You might see two different advergames to start: Quiz Show and Beat the Block. While Quiz Show presents a series of trivia questions, Beat the Block challenges viewers to land golf balls into specific targets using their remote. Of course, they’re branded experiences, as the Beat the Block ad features branding for Topgolf, and the Quiz Show game will prominently display an ad for a company while you play.

The pitch for this format is that it gives advertisers feedback on whether viewers actually noticed their content — plus, more kinds of ads mean more money for streamers. In its most recent earnings report, Disney’s streaming business inched closer to profitability after drawing more users to its ad-supported tier.

Disney is partnering with the streaming TV company BrightLine to enable the new playable ad formats. It has also brought shoppable ads to Disney Plus made by Kerv, which show QR codes that link you directly to a product page. As noted by Adweek, shoppable ads are programmatic, meaning advertisers purchase the ads automatically, and an algorithm will decide who to show them to and when.

On ESPN, the ads seem inevitable, at least for now, but on Disney’s other streaming platforms, your only option to avoid the ads is to pay a bit more each month.