Amazon, Disney duke it out over ad revenue from Fire TV apps

Amazon and Disney reportedly are locked in a standoff over the advertising inventory within Disney apps on Amazon’s Fire TV platform.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon wants to sell a “substantial percentage” of the available ad space on Disney streaming apps, and Disney isn’t taking the deal. The publication’s sources seemed to think a deal could still be reached, but said that if not, streaming apps for networks including ABC, ESPN and Disney Channel could be pulled down from Fire TV devices.

The report said that the advertising dispute is one of the reasons that the upcoming Disney+ streaming service is launching without support for Amazon devices. The report also said that Amazon typically starts out negotiations asking for 40% of ad inventory from programmers before coming down to 30% or 20%. The deal talks with Disney are reportedly currently centered on 10% of ad space.

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If Amazon and Disney are not able to reach an agreement, a sizable audience of Fire TV users would lose access to Disney’s apps. In September, Amazon said that it has more than 37 million active users worldwide. That’s up from 34 million in May of this year.

Amazon Fire TV’s streaming boxes and sticks, along with its platform that combines access to subscription and ad-supported streaming content, most closely compete with Roku in the U.S.

According to TDG’s “Benchmarking the Connected Consumer 2019” research—which is the 10th annual occurrence of the firm’s user survey—just more than 30% of adult broadband users have a streaming box, and 38% have a streaming stick. The data shows that Roku has approximately 51% share of the streaming box market in the U.S., the company has only about 30% of the market for streaming sticks. Fire TV, on the other hand, only has 28.5% share of the U.S. streaming box market but nearly 57% of the streaming stick share of U.S. households.