Disney today began rolling out Verts to Disney+ subscribers in the United States, introducing a swipeable vertical video feed on the platform's mobile app. The feature, announced on March 12, 2026, by The Walt Disney Company, marks the first phase of what the company describes as an ongoing evolution of vertical video on its streaming platform. It is accessible via a new icon in the navigation bar of the Disney+ mobile app.

The launch comes weeks after short-form vertical video has accelerated across publisher and streaming environments. JWX, formerly JW Player, released its own swipeable vertical video product for publishers on February 19, 2026, and research published in November 2025 found that 81% of U.S. consumers primarily watch short-form vertical video on smartphones, with YouTube Shorts leading at 56% of surveyed respondents as their primary destination for such content.

What Verts does on the Disney+ app

According to Disney's announcement, Verts operates as a dynamic feed within the Disney+ mobile app. Users tap a dedicated Verts icon in the navigation bar and enter a full-screen vertical video environment. From there, they can swipe through a stream of scenes and moments extracted from movies and TV shows already on the platform. Two actions are available directly within the feed: adding a title to a Watchlist or jumping immediately into full playback of the relevant content.

The feature was first announced at Disney's 2026 Global Tech & Data Showcase before this week's consumer rollout. Its stated purpose is content discovery - helping subscribers find their next watch within a catalog that Disney describes as spanning more than 100 years of storytelling.

The technical architecture behind Verts relies on what Disney calls an advanced algorithm powering its recommendation engine. According to the company, this engine ensures that the feed feels "uniquely relevant and personalized to each individual user." Disney has not released specific technical documentation on how the algorithm operates or what signals it ingests, but the personalisation framing aligns with the platform's broader shift toward AI-powered recommendation infrastructure. Disney's refreshed homepage, launched in fall 2025, already featured a dedicated "For You" section and improvements to recommendation engines through artificial intelligence.

The ESPN precedent

Verts is not new to Disney's portfolio. According to the company, the format launched on ESPN in August 2025 and has since driven additional engagement in both early Disney+ experiments and in the ESPN deployment. The company did not publish specific engagement numbers for either the ESPN rollout or the Disney+ experiments in the March 12 announcement.

That ESPN launch fits a broader pattern of Disney testing product innovations within its sports platform before migrating them to entertainment properties. Disney announced major streaming initiatives on August 6, 2025, including ESPN's direct-to-consumer launch on August 21 of that year, alongside NFL Network partnership agreements that expanded ESPN's content library. Enhanced personalization and new interactive features were central to that ESPN rollout.

The parallel between Verts on ESPN and Verts on Disney+ is direct. A format designed around short, swipeable previews of live and on-demand sports content has now been adapted for a catalog that includes Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic titles, plus general entertainment.

Why this format, and why now

Vertical video's rise on streaming platforms is not accidental. It reflects where mobile attention has migrated. Research released in November 2025 identified quick and easy-to-watch format as the primary draw for short-form vertical video, cited by 72% of respondents, while 61% found short-form video more engaging than articles, podcasts, or long-form video. Smartphones accounted for 81% of short-form video consumption in that study.

Disney's approach with Verts goes beyond simply replicating TikTok mechanics inside a subscription streaming app. The feed is anchored to existing catalog content - scenes and moments from films and series already available on the platform - rather than short-form originals produced specifically for vertical consumption. The discovery loop is built around the platform's depth rather than a separate creator economy. At launch, according to the company, the team is already "exploring and experimenting" with ways to expand the feature beyond content discovery.

What those expansions might look like is partially outlined. Disney indicated that future versions of Verts could incorporate content from creators that reflects its fandoms, as well as additional storytelling formats, content types, and personalised experiences. The framing - "the first scene of the first episode in a multi-season series" - signals a phased rollout structure rather than a finished product.

Context: Disney's mobile and streaming product momentum

The Verts launch follows a sustained period of Disney+ product development. Disney+ and Hulu advertising revenue reached record levels in Q1 fiscal 2026, with Entertainment SVOD operating income climbing 72% year-over-year to $450 million in the quarter ended December 27, 2025. The platform reported 122 million ad-supported streaming subscribers at that point. Revenue across Disney's Entertainment SVOD services grew 11% compared to the prior-year quarter, according to company commentary released February 2, 2026.

Content performance has been strong. Disney+ and Hulu captured seven of the top 10 most-watched shows of 2025 according to Nielsen data, with Bluey maintaining its position as the most-streamed show in the United States for the second consecutive year, accumulating 45 billion minutes watched. In December 2024, Disney held 11.2% of total U.S. television usage - the fourth consecutive month the company led the Nielsen Media Distributor Gauge.

On the advertising technology side, Disney launched its Disney Compass data platform on January 7, 2025, consolidating the company's Audience Graph and clean room capabilities into a single entry point. In June 2025, Amazon DSP gained direct access to Disney inventory through the Real-Time Ad Exchange, expanding programmatic reach for advertisers. AudienceProject activated a direct Disney+ integration for independent audience measurement across five European markets - the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain - on January 21, 2026.

Verts sits within this trajectory of platform investment. Where the advertising infrastructure improvements address the monetisation layer, Verts targets the engagement layer - the moment when a subscriber opens the app and either finds something to watch or closes it.

What Verts means for the advertising and marketing community

The implications for advertisers are not yet explicit. Disney has not announced whether Verts will carry advertising inventory, what ad formats might exist within the feed, or how the feature integrates with Disney's programmatic infrastructure including DRAX, Disney Compass, or its certified live-ad partners.

However, the structural logic is clear to observers of the streaming advertising market. Vertical video feeds that drive incremental engagement sessions also generate incremental advertising inventory. If Verts increases the frequency and duration of mobile app opens, it expands the surface area available to advertisers on ad-supported tiers. Disney's ad-supported subscriber base stood at 122 million as of early February 2026 - a pool that becomes more valuable as engagement deepens.

There is also a data angle. The recommendation engine that powers Verts will, by design, learn from user interaction signals - which clips users swipe past, which they engage with, which they add to Watchlists, and which prompt full playback. Those signals feed the personalisation loop, and personalisation data is the foundation of Disney's audience targeting capabilities across its advertising stack. Disney Compass, the company's unified data platform, was built precisely to connect audience behaviour across Disney's properties into actionable advertising signals.

For brands already active on Disney+ through programmatic channels, Verts may not require immediate tactical adjustments. But for those monitoring the platform's engagement architecture, the feature represents a new data signal layer entering the system.

The vertical video format itself carries creative implications. LinkedIn data showed short-form social videos producing 55% ROI for B2B marketers, while the Media.net research from November 2025 found 90% of consumers want vertical video available beyond social platforms. If Disney eventually opens Verts to advertising, brands will need vertical-format creative assets compatible with a 9:16 aspect ratio and designed for a browsing rather than committed-viewing context - a meaningfully different creative brief than a standard pre-roll or mid-roll.

Scope and phasing

The initial rollout is limited to U.S. subscribers on the Disney+ mobile app. The company has not provided a timeline for international expansion or for the desktop and connected TV equivalents. Given that Disney+ operates across twelve countries with an ad-supported tier, and that the platform has active measurement partnerships in European markets, an international rollout seems probable, though Disney has not confirmed dates.

The feature is positioned explicitly as phase one. According to the company, "this launch is just the beginning." What fans see today on Verts was built with "user utility and scale in mind." The roadmap includes expanded content types beyond catalog clips, potential creator contributions tied to Disney's fan communities, and personalised experiences that go beyond the current discovery function.

Disney's framing of Verts as a multi-season series in itself signals that the product team views the initial launch as infrastructure - the mobile-first feed, the recommendation engine, the UI placement - on which more complex features will be built over time.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Walt Disney Company, through its Disney+ streaming platform, for U.S. subscribers with the Disney+ mobile app.

What: The launch of Verts, a swipeable vertical video feed embedded in the Disney+ mobile app that surfaces scenes and moments from the platform's catalog, allowing users to add titles to a Watchlist or jump directly into playback. The feature is powered by a personalised recommendation algorithm.

When: Beginning the week of March 12, 2026, first announced at Disney's 2026 Global Tech & Data Showcase. The format launched earlier on ESPN in August 2025.

Where: The Disney+ mobile app in the United States, accessible via a new Verts icon in the app's navigation bar.

Why: Disney is addressing the content discovery challenge on its mobile app - connecting subscribers to its catalog of more than 100 years of content through a format that mirrors consumption habits already established on social platforms. The move also positions the platform to generate denser engagement signals on mobile, feeding its personalisation infrastructure and, potentially, expanding advertising inventory on its ad-supported tier as the feature matures.

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