Disney said Wednesday it has an estimated 157 million global monthly active users watching ad-supported content across its streaming platforms — Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+.

That number includes 112 million users domestically and is an average per month over the last six months.

While traditional TV outlets have a standard way of measuring ratings and viewership, there is still no industry standard methodology for measuring global streaming advertising audience size.

The company said that its Disney Advertising unit has “set out to define a globally consistent approach and methodology to estimate ad-supported audience numbers.” It’s providing the update and further insight into its ad-supported streaming business during the annual CES tech conference in Las Vegas, a go-to event for the advertising and media industry.

“Disney sits at the intersection of world class sports and entertainment content, with the most high-value audiences in ad-supported global streaming at scale,” said Rita Ferro, Disney’s president of global advertising, in a news release. “We wanted to be the first to offer our industry greater transparency into the methodology used to estimate our engaged global ad-supported monthly active users.”

In explaining the methodology, the company said the metric is derived from active accounts across Disney’s three streaming services that have viewed ad-supported shows and movies continuously for more than 10 seconds. “Each active account is then multiplied by the number of estimated users per account … to estimate the total number of users,” it said. The estimated active users are added across the apps without de-duplication, meaning users who subscribe to more than one of the platforms could be counted more than once.

Media companies have become particularly focused on generating profits from their streaming businesses, and advertising has become a key way to do that. While many platforms were initially subscription services without commercials, streaming platforms in recent years have introduced cheaper, ad-supported tiers for consumers.

Disney CEO Bob Iger has said that the company is trying to steer its customers toward its ad-supported tiers. The company has raised prices on commercial-free options since launching Disney+ with ads in late 2022.

Disney’s Hulu was one of the first streaming platforms to offer an ad-supported option. More recently, Disney+ introduced an ad-supported tier.

In November, Disney said it had 122.7 million Disney+ Core subscribers, which excludes Disney+ Hotstar in India and other countries in the region. Hulu had 52 million subscribers, while ESPN+ had 25.6 million paid subscribers.

The company historically hasn’t reported exactly how many subscribers on each platform pay for the ad-supported option, but executives in the earnings call in November said more than half of new U.S. Disney+ subscribers were choosing the cheaper, ad-supported tier, adding this “bodes well for the future.”

Disney noted during the call that average revenue per user for domestic Disney+ customers dropped from $7.74 to $7.70, due to a higher mix of customers on its cheaper, ad-supported tier and wholesale offerings. 

Executives also said in November that they were confident streaming would “be a significant growth area” for the company.

At the time, the company reported that its combined streaming business, which includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, posted operating income of $321 million for the September period compared with a loss of $387 million during the same period the year prior.

Disney will report its fiscal first-quarter earnings on Feb. 5 before the bell.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday that World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder Vince McMahon will pay more than $1.7 million in relation to charges that he failed to disclose payment agreements related to sexual assault charges.

Meanwhile, a woman suing McMahon and the WWE said she was pressing on with her civil case related to the allegations.

The SEC said McMahon circumvented WWE internal accounting controls and caused material misstatements in the company’s 2018 and 2021 financial statements.

The SEC added that McMahon agreed to the settlement without admitting or denying its findings. He will pay a $400,000 civil penalty and reimburse WWE approximately $1,331,000. 

“Company executives cannot enter into material agreements on behalf of the company they serve and withhold that information from the company’s control functions and auditor,” Thomas P. Smith Jr., Associate Regional Director in the New York Regional Office, said in a statement.

McMahon released the following statement Friday:

“The case is closed. Today ends nearly three years of investigation by different governmental agencies. There has been a great deal of speculation about what exactly the government was investigating and what the outcome would be. As today’s resolution shows, much of that speculation was misguided and misleading. In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was CEO of WWE. I’m thrilled that I can now put all this behind me.”

Last month, U.S. prosecutors indicated they would continue a criminal investigation into McMahon while a civil case being brought by a former WWE employee alleging sexual assault and trafficking went forward. 

A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An attorney for Janel Grant, a former WWE employee who filed the civil case, said in a statement that Grant intended to press on with her suit against McMahon, WWE and John Laurinaitis, a former company executive.

“During his time leading WWE, Vince McMahon acted as if rules did not apply to him, and now we have confirmation that he repeatedly broke the law to cover up his horrifying behavior, including human trafficking,’ said the attorney, Ann Callis.

‘The SEC’s charges prove that the NDA Vince McMahon coerced Ms. Grant into signing violates the law, and therefore her case must be heard in court. While prosecutors for the Southern District of New York continue their criminal investigation, we look forward to bringing forward new evidence in our civil case about the sexual exploitation Ms. Grant endured at WWE by Vince McMahon and John Laurinaitis.”

The SEC alleges McMahon failed to disclose one $3 million payment paid to a former WWE employee — and another $7.5 million paid to a female independent contractor — in exchange for their not filing claims against him.

As a result, the agency said, the WWE overstated its 2018 net income by approximately 8% and its 2021 net income by approximately 1.7%. 

The SEC did not name either payment recipient. In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported McMahon had paid $3 million to a former WWE employee to quash sexual assault allegations.

Two years later, that employee, Grant, filed explosive sexual assault and trafficking allegations against McMahon and WWE, prompting McMahon to step down as executive chairman of TKO, the WWE’s parent company, and relinquished all roles with WWE.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that McMahon has paid as much as $12 million over 16 years to suppress various allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity.

The settlement comes as Linda McMahon, Vince McMahon’s wife and former WWE CEO, prepares for Senate confirmation hearings to become education secretary in President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.

CORRECTION (Jan. 10, 2025, 12:50 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the last name of one of the former WWE employees who filed a civil case against Vince McMahon. She is Janel Grant, not Janel Hill.

Microsoft is cutting a small percentage of jobs across departments, based on performance, the company confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

“At Microsoft we focus on high-performance talent,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to CNBC on Wednesday. “We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action.”

Business Insider reported on the plans late Tuesday.

The job cuts will affect less than 1% of employees, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named in order to discuss private information.

Microsoft had 228,000 employees at the end of June. While the company’s net income margin of nearly 38% is close to its highest since the early 2000s, Microsoft’s stock underperformed its peers last year, rising 12% while the Nasdaq gained 29%.

Microsoft’s latest cuts are slim compared with recent downsizing efforts.

In early 2023, the company laid off 10,000 employees and consolidated leases. In January 2024, three months after completing the $75.4 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft’s gaming unit shed 1,900 jobs to reduce overlap.

As 2025 begins, Microsoft faces a more tenuous relationship with artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, which the company has backed to the tune of more than $13 billion. The partnership helped propel Microsoft’s market cap past $3 trillion last year.

Over the summer, Microsoft added OpenAI to its list of competitors. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used the phrase “cooperation tension” while discussing the relationship with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley on a podcast released last month.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant, which draws on OpenAI technology, has yet to become pervasive in business. Analysts at UBS said in a note last month that they came away from Microsoft’s Ignite conference with the impression that Copilot rollouts “have been a bit slow/underwhelming.”

Microsoft is still touting its growth opportunities. Finance chief Amy Hood said in October that revenue growth from Microsoft’s Azure cloud will speed up in the first half of this year because of greater AI infrastructure capacity.

Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have called off plans to launch their sports streaming service, Venu, the companies said in a joint statement Friday.

“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service,” they said in the statement. “In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels. We are proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period.”

Venu was first announced in February and intended to combine the live sports assets of Fox, WBD and Disney-owned ESPN. It was initially slated to launch before the start of the NFL season in September, but was delayed in part by a legal challenge from internet TV bundler Fubo, which claimed the platform would be anticompetitive.

Together Disney, Fox and WBD control more than 50% of all U.S. sports media rights, and at least 60% of all nationally broadcast U.S. sports rights, according to the judge on the antitrust case.

The news that it would not launch came as a shock to Venu employees, who found out late Thursday night, according to people familiar with the matter. They believed they had a pathway forward to launch the service after Disney agreed earlier this week to merge its Hulu+ Live TV with Fubo, settling all litigation over Venu.

But the judge’s response in Fubo’s lawsuit questioned the legality of cable bundling in general, prompting Disney to strike the deal with Fubo, through which Disney would take 70% control of the resulting company. And two days ago, satellite providers DirecTV and Dish sent letters to federal court arguing that the legal questions brought up by the judge remained unanswered.

Rather than risk an extended lawsuit that could jeopardize bundling in general — including Disney’s efforts to bundle its own streaming entities (ESPN, Hulu and Disney+) — the three companies decided to pull the plug on Venu, according to people familiar with the company’s decisions.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s business model relies heavily on negotiating bundled carriage agreements for its many cable networks, including CNN, TNT, HGTV and Food Network.

Disney is targeting a debut of ESPN “Flagship,” an all-inclusive ESPN streaming service, for August 2025. The still unnamed ESPN streaming service will including everything that airs on ESPN’s linear network, unlike ESPN+.

Disney’s deal with Fubo, along with the company’s recent carriage renewal with DirecTV, also gives the company new ways to package so-called skinny bundles — narrower selections of channels for less money. This was the idea behind Venu: selling a smaller number of linear channels for less money than traditional cable TV.

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, is a co-owner of Hulu.