{"id":600443,"date":"2023-01-22T23:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/22\/disney-plans-to-extend-hulus-ad-targeting-options-to-disneys-ad-tier\/"},"modified":"2023-01-22T23:01:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T05:01:00","slug":"disney-plans-to-extend-hulus-ad-targeting-options-to-disneys-ad-tier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/22\/disney-plans-to-extend-hulus-ad-targeting-options-to-disneys-ad-tier\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney plans to extend Hulu\u2019s ad targeting options to Disney+\u2019s ad tier"},"content":{"rendered":"
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January 23, 2023<\/span> | By Tim Peterson<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\tIvy Liu\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Disney debuted Disney+\u2019s ad-supported tier last December with a fairly basic feature set for advertisers. For example, advertisers couldn\u2019t target ads to specific audiences like they can on Disney\u2019s other ad-supported streamer, Hulu. But that\u2019s about to change.<\/p>\n

In April, Disney will begin to roll out some of Hulu\u2019s ad targeting capabilities to Disney+, and by July, Hulu\u2019s \u201cfull suite of ad products and services\u201d will become available across Disney\u2019s streaming portfolio, said Disney Advertising president Rita Ferro in an interview ahead of the company\u2019s annual Tech & Data Showcase event for advertisers on Jan. 25.<\/p>\n

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Asked what specific ad targeting capabilities from Hulu will be ported to Disney+, Ferro said, \u201cit\u2019ll be some of the basic stuff: age, gender, some geo-targeting. And then the full suite of targeting in July.\u201d That expanded targeting suite will include the 2,000 audience segments available through the Disney Select first-party data platform \u2014 which spans 235 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S. to Disney\u2019s media properties and more than 100 million U.S. household-level IDs, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe targeting thing is probably big for them because they can better monetize the inventory as opposed to us just buying P2+ [the broad audience segment of anyone two years old and older] and there\u2019s so much waste. Now they can make it more valuable. So that will definitely help. It\u2019s important for us to have the same capabilities on Disney+ that we\u2019re now accustomed to on most of the other streamers,\u201d said an agency executive.<\/p>\n

The extension of Hulu\u2019s ad products and services to Disney+ is the latest showing of Disney\u2019s push to unify its back-end ad tech operation<\/a> as the company seeks to automate 50% of its ad sales \u2014 a goal that Ferro said Disney is on pace to reach this year. \u201cWe\u2019re at 35% right now, and that\u2019s before the full integration of all of these [ad products and services from Hulu],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Underpinning Disney\u2019s streaming ad tech expansion is the Disney Ad Server, which stems from the company taking full control of Hulu and its ad server in 2019<\/a>. Disney\u2019s ad server already powers 100% of Hulu\u2019s and Disney+\u2019s ad platforms in the U.S., said Aaron LaBerge, CTO of Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution. \u201cOver the next 12 months, [DAS] will be powering all of our addressable platforms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Disney Ad Server is \u201cthe heart of our platform,\u201d LaBerge said, and it is complemented by Disney\u2019s Yield Optimized Delivery Allocation product that balances direct-sold vs. programmatic vs. self-serve ad buys as well as the Disney Real-time Ad Exchange that sells Disney\u2019s ad inventory programmatically (and yep, Disney has intentionally named the two ad tech products after Lucasfilm and Marvel characters).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve made significant investments in our technology platform to serve ads for the entire company,\u201d LaBerge added.<\/p>\n

Now, back-end technology, as the label implies, is typically behind-the-scenes work that can be hard to detect on the surface. But a second agency executive said they have noticed the impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big thing for them that we\u2019ve seen over the past two years, accelerated over the last year and further over the last three months going into this year has been their pace in terms of getting organized operationally and unifying their disparate assets,\u201d said the second agency executive. Specifically, this agency executive cited Disney\u2019s ability to simplify the process of finding audiences across its ad inventory supply pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That capability has likely come in handy when it comes to managing supply and demand dynamics for Disney+\u2019s ad-supported tier. Ferro declined to say how many Disney+ ad-supported subscribers the company has accrued so far, but asked if the company has run into any under-delivery issues like Netflix has with its similarly nascent ad-supported tier<\/a>, she said it has not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unique thing that I think is different for Disney than Netflix in this particular situation is we have a whole streaming ecosystem beyond Disney+, so we\u2019re able to manage that much more holistically,\u201d said Ferro.<\/p>\n

Translation: If Disney+ were to run low on slots for advertisers, Disney could reroute campaigns to Hulu or other inventory sources (with advertisers\u2019 approval).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Agency executives said they have not encountered ad delivery issues with Disney+, but the first agency executive said, \u201cWe have heard them saying things like they might want to shift spend off of Disney+ for certain advertisers to diversify and make room for other advertisers to diversify the creative ad rotation people are seeing.\u201d This executive also said that Disney has not shared numbers with advertisers on how many ad-supported subscribers Disney+ has or how many people their ads have reached on the streaming service.<\/p>\n

A Disney spokesperson confirmed the ad spend shift discussions. \u201cRemixing is all normal for us. This practice all ties back to our commitment to a high quality viewer first experience. The beauty of our 100+ advertisers ensures that we have variety, volume and versatility of client categories and creative, which sets the stage for a better viewing experience \u2013 and essentially helps maintain our low frequency caps,\u201d they said. A second Disney spokesperson cited the company\u2019s ad tech stack as enabling this delivery flexibility and said the company does not share subscriber numbers outside of its quarterly earnings reports.<\/p>\n

All of this will likely come to bear in this year\u2019s annual TV advertising upfront marketplace. As part of its upfront pre-planning process, Disney held more than 120 meetings during CES with advertisers, agencies and tech vendors. Now it is following up on those meetings with the Tech & Data Showcase and, later, the extension of Hulu\u2019s ad products and services to further automate Disney\u2019s ad sales. And a pillar of Disney\u2019s upfront pitch this year seems to be selling advertisers on campaigns that can be automated to go wide across Disney\u2019s streaming portfolio \u2014 including Disney+ \u2014 and drill down to particular audiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have that expectation that Disney deliver across our full suite of products,\u201d Ferro said. \u201cAnd so we wanted to make sure we got that right. Disney+ is part of our full integrated first-party data offering, and so to be able to turn that on and really deliver against it the way we have on Hulu, that\u2019s the plan. All the work has been done. And we\u2019re going to be able to roll it out seamlessly as part of everything we do in this upfront for next year \u2014 full scope of scale of all of that as well as the ad formats and all the innovation that we will launch \u2014 we will publish it now to the full platform. That\u2019s the beauty of having everything on the same ad server.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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