Disney debuts new shoppable ad units and measurement partners at CES

TV advertisers and media buyers are doing double duty at CES—Disney moved its annual Tech and Data showcase earlier than past years to take place during the tech conference. The timing of the Mouse House’s show continues the trend of media companies’ moves to start upfront conversations earlier and lock in increasingly scarce dollars in the TV ad market. The show will present advertisers with the latest formats and capabilities that Disney will be pitching throughout the spring, leading into upfront dealmaking. This year’s announcements include updates on the media company’s ongoing ad tech development, expanded ad measurement and a new shoppable ad format. More: Disney’s ad chief on AI, new formats and 2024 outlook Shoppable ads come to Hulu (and Disney+ at some point) At last year’s Tech and Data Showcase, Disney teased that new ad formats, such as shoppable ads, would soon come to Disney+ as the streamer aimed to reach parity with the ad products of its elder sibling Hulu. A new shoppable ad format has now arrived—currently just for Hulu. The new ads, called Gateway Shop, are an evolution of interactive ads that currently run on Hulu in which users can choose to scan a QR code or have additional information sent to their phone by clicking the option with their remote. The new ads are more commerce-focused, continuing streaming’s trend toward driving business outcomes for brands rather than awareness metrics historically associated with TV advertising. Gateway Shop ads will be served in mid-roll ad breaks. While a 15- or 30-second spot plays, it is framed by additional information for the products displayed in the video. One section shows a carousel of products and their prices. Another has options to send checkout details to the viewer’s phone or email, or access the shopping site via a QR code. The spot is followed by an additional 15 seconds giving the viewer a final prompt to interact with the ad. While some streamers and CTV platforms have invested in shoppable ad units that allow users to purchase and ship products without leaving their TV screens, Disney made a deliberate choice to lean into multi-screen viewing habits, said Alex Combs, VP of ad product, platforms at Disney. One insight Combs pointed out in Disney's product research phase is that users are often on their phones while streaming, often already searching for products they see on screen. Tapping into what Combs called natural viewing behavior allows Disney to “introduce commerce and engagement in CTV” without delaying viewers’ return to content while they complete a transaction. Read more: Retail media news from CES Disney is launching Gateway Shop in beta form and will look to partner with consumer packaged goods and retail advertisers, said Jamie Power, senior VP of addressable sales at Disney. Unilever will be one of the first advertisers to test the capability with Disney via its media agency Mindshare. Power added the product has inherent utility for those categories while other interactive formats, such as users being able to swap the color and features on a car during an auto ad, better fit additional categories. Gateway Shop will initially launch for Hulu, with Disney+ to follow in the future. The company will work with advertisers to match retail data with Disney’s first-party data to identify audience segments most likely to deliver on individual campaign goals. Disney expects, in the coming months, to be able to personalize messaging for products and offers within the ad unit based on audience. Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here More measurement Disney has been expanding its roster of measurement partners. Dana McGraw, senior VP, audience modeling and data science at Disney, said the company’s approach to curating partners one by one has been both based on feedback about challenges for individual brand categories in streaming as well as to allow advertisers to tie learnings from measurement partners into targeting with Disney’s first-party audience data. “Obviously our goal is to enable measurement for brands to be able to see how their campaigns are performing—and now, not only to see how they’re performing, but to leverage that data over time to improve performance at the start of a campaign,” said McGraw. As such, two new measurement partnerships aim to aid different advertiser needs. Lucid Impact Measurement by Cint delivers metrics such as ad recall, consideration, purchase intent and brand favorability to brands faster. McGraw said these insights are typically available to brands well after the end of a campaign, but by partnering with Lucid, Disney will be able to share metrics with advertisers while the campaign is still running. Disney noted NBA 2K24, The Hershey Co. and Josh Cellars as initial brands that utilized the metrics. Read all of the latest news from CES On the other end of the marketing funnel, a new partnership with Innovid will deliver real-time business attribution data to advertisers. DoorDash and its media agency, Wavemaker, were early users of Innovid to measure advertising on Disney. “DoorDash has advanced measurement needs, and Disney is adept at addressing not only our everyday KPIs but also in tying media into our larger business goals,” said Evelyn Lopez Mendoza, director of growth marketing at DoorDash, via email. DoorDash and other delivery services in particular have been eager to activate TV commerce ads as platforms develop the tech to order while binging. Both partnerships will feature unique dashboards created for Disney advertisers, and allow advertisers to evaluate campaign performance and adjust to increase results during the campaign. In addition to the measurement partnerships, Disney gave updates on its tech advances since last year’s Tech and Data Showcase. The company announced new access for interfacing with its data clean room, particularly notable as brands strategize for the post-cookie future. Additional cloud services include Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud and a new partnership with clean room tech company Habu to launch an easy-access portal for advertisers. And in Disney’s quest to automate a significant portion of its sales processes, it announced Disney+ and ESPN+ inventory will become available through its self-service ad platform this year, and will also expand for use globally. 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Disney debuts new shoppable ad units and measurement partners at CES

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