WatchESPN earning "tens of millions" in ad revenues

A spokesman for Disney has indicated that while multiplatform (mobile) advertising remains a relatively small portion of Disney's overall business, the WatchESPN app is already generating significant revenues.

"The [WatchESPN] app is an opportunity for [ESPN] to generate more advertising revenue, and they are in fact selling ads for the watch app, but the numbers, even though they are in the probably tens of millions of dollars at this point, they are still relatively small when compared to their total, both advertising revenue and their total revenue," Disney CEO Bob Iger told analysts on the company's second-quarter earnings call. "But we believe that they will continue to grow," he added.

 Disney also indicated that the upcoming WatchABC app could add a new revenue stream for ABC's owned & operated broadcast stations.

Overall, Disney reported earning $11.6 billion overall in the second quarter of 2013, up 4% from the same time last year.  The various cable networks accounted for $2.1 billion of that amount, a gain of more than 10%.  ESPN and A&E networks reported big increases in affiliate (carriage) fees and ad revenues, which offset declines in ABC Family networks.

Source -  Disney: WatchESPN generating "tens of millions" in ad revenues,  FierceCable