Workflow
Ferro said that Disney currently works with 8,000 advertisers. “I want to work with 80,000 advertisers,” said Ferro. “I can’t scale that when I have to review tens of thousands of pieces of creative a month.”
That’s where AI might come in—it could automate the review of that creative, which would then open the door for advertisers historically shut out of the top-dollar TV ad market. Disney is already doing that in some ways. Its self-service, programmatic ad platforms allow small and medium-sized businesses and performance advertisers the ability to buy inventory across the Mouse House’s assets, and eventually offer additional capabilities to develop AI-generated creative at lower costs for those brands without major production budgets.
On the consumer-facing end, streamers and digital platforms have for years used AI and algorithms to serve viewers custom recommendations on what to watch next, and platforms including YouTube have long utilized AI to enforce its content policies, said YouTube’s Albert.
As for advertisers, “We’re very early innings in beginning to explore what’s possible for brands and creators and overall storytelling on YouTube,” said Albert.
AI naturally lends itself to the addressable and dynamic ad capabilities that have become more prominent. These tools allow advertisers to adjust campaigns as they run per the behavior of target audiences, and serve different versions of creative based on interactions with a previous ad or first-party data on the consumer’s existing brand relationship.
With AI, “we’re just making it easier for you as an advertiser to reach the right audience around the right content with the right formats,” said Albert.