1. Disney uses data and machine learning to optimize the customer experience on its Disney+ streaming platform. This includes personalized recommendations, traffic routing, and fraud detection. 2. The goal is to provide a seamless viewing experience across all devices and regions by minimizing latency, stream start times, and errors through effective traffic routing and content delivery. 3. Disney collects streaming data to power personalized recommendations and predictive models for traffic patterns and optimal resource allocation based on user behavior, preferences, devices, networks, and locations.

1. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
AT DISNEY+ THROUGH
DATA PERSPECTIVE
Rekha Bachwani
Principal Engineer
ML Platform
Martin Zapletal
Director
Data Platform

2. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney 2

3. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney 3
▸ Personalized home page
using recommendations
▸ Traffic routing
▸ Fraud detection

4. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
MAIN
GOALS
Personalized Disney+ Magic at Scale
• Millions of users from across the world
• Broad and diverse content catalog
1
2
3
Heterogeneity
• Multitude of devices, networks and geographies
• Interconnected networks spread over complex
distribution channels
Seamless Viewing Experience
• Across all platforms, networks and regions
4

5. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
PROBLEM: SEAMLESS USER EXPERIENCE
5
1. Traffic routing
– Minimize latency and meet bandwidth requirements
– Shorter stream start time
– Prevent re-buffering and streaming errors
– Faster content delivery
2. Personalization
– Efficient content distribution and hosting

6. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
APPROACH
6
1. Effective logging and data persistence
– Capture relevant interactions
– Ensure data quality and efficient storage
o Support analytics for continual evaluation and optimization
o Help in uncovering issues and in debugging
2. Learning based intelligence
– Past behavior to predict traffic patterns
– Device and user characteristics for personalized performance
– Geographical and network constraints for optimal routing

7. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Users and
Devices
Edge
Streaming Data
Platform
Services Data Lake
Experimentation
Analytics, ML
BI, Reporting
7

8. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Users and
Devices
Edge
Streaming Data
Platform
Services Data Lake
Experimentation
Analytics, ML
BI, Reporting
8

9. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
PLATFORM
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AT DISNEY+ THROUGH DATA PERSPECTIVE

10. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Data
Management
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon
ElastiCache
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks/Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Simple
Storage Service (S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Firehose
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service
Amazon Kinesis
Data Analytics for
Apache Flink
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
10

11. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon
ElastiCache
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks/Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Simple
Storage Service (S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Firehose
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service
Amazon Kinesis
Data Analytics for
Apache Flink
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Data
Management
11

12. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Data
Management
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon
ElastiCache
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks/Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Simple
Storage Service (S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Firehose
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service
Amazon Kinesis
Data Analytics for
Apache Flink
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Schema Registry
12

13. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Platform
Self-service patterns
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon
ElastiCache
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Amazon Elastic
Container Service
Databricks / Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Databricks/Spark Amazon Simple
Storage Service
(S3)
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Simple
Storage Service (S3)
Databricks / Spark Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis
Data Firehose
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service
Amazon Kinesis
Data Analytics for
Apache Flink
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
13

14. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Platform
14
● Data lineage
● Data guarantees and semantics
● Self-healing
● Distributed tracing
● Cost efficiency
● Discoverability
● Traffic management
● Data as a service platform
● Etc.
● Architecture patterns
● Automated testing
● Performance testing and management
● Elasticity and auto-scaling
● Deployment automation
● Observability
● Alerting
● Reliability and resilience
● Operations simplicity
● Multi-region and failover

15. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Platform
15
● Operational use cases impacting customer experience
● Configurable trade-offs
● End-to-end management
● Achieved via services and tools

16. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Tech Stack
16
Analytics and ML Data processing Services
Streaming Data Platform | Data Platform | ML Platform | Experimentation
AWS KDA
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, AWS MSK, AWS S3
AWS
Lambda
AWS SDK,
KPL, KCL
Databricks Airflow JupyterHub
EMR, AWS
ECS, AWS
EKS

17. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
ANALYTICS & ML
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AT DISNEY+ THROUGH DATA PERSPECTIVE

18. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Traffic routing using
behavioral analytics
User preferences
Device, geography
Request characteristics
Content metadata, network, and
bandwidth
Use Cases
Seasonality and traffic
trends
Statistical models and time
series analysis
Demand forecasting
Operational efficiency
Optimal allocation of
resources based on
demand, cost and
experience
18

19. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Typical Pipeline
19
Event Data
Feature
Engineering
Features
Heuristics
& Metrics
Time Series
Analysis
Predictors
& Classifiers
Services
Data
Lake
Batch Data
Model
Output
Machine Learning
Transformed &
tabularized data
Raw Data

20. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
• Personalized experience at scale
o Data is integral to Disney+ magic
– Accessibility, quality and ubiquity
o Intentional optimization of user experience
o Operational excellence
• Feedback to continually improve service
• Self-service platform (libraries, tools, services, apis, automation, …)
and solution enablement over “pipelines”
• Cloud, OSS, vendors help with rapid development
20
Summary

21. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ∙ Disney Streaming
©Disney
Thank you
Martin Zapletal
Twitter: @zapletal_martin
LinkedIn: martinzapletal
Rekha Bachwani
Twitter: @rnbachwani
LinkedIn: rbachwani

22. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney 22
To learn more and explore career opportunities visit
DISNEYTECH.COM

23. Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney
Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution ● Disney Streaming ● ©Disney 23
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