How Disney and YouTube are experimenting with AI in video advertising

Artificial intelligence has become the industry’s latest obsession as interest in NFTs and the metaverse has waned. While the earlier days of generative AI may have focused on auto-generated headshots and chatbots, advertisers and marketers are beginning to explore how the emerging tech might be used to change the way ads are made and delivered to audiences. The potential impact of AI on the capabilities of media companies highlights the ever-changing definition of what TV is, and how the lines between traditional media companies such as Disney and traditional tech companies such as Google continue to blur. During Ad Age’s recent State of TV Advertising conference, executives from both companies spoke about how AI might soon transform the world of video advertising. AI marketing blog How brands are using ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and other tools Read more here Rita Ferro, president of advertising at Disney, said the next 12 months of innovation will be tied to AI. The executive mentioned two different areas that would be impacted by the utility of AI: workflow and ad creative. Creative The potential of AI may impact how ad creative is generated and served to viewers. An example that immediately comes to mind is commerce, Ferro said. With many streamers dabbling in shoppable advertising—Peacock brought the capability to the upfront market, while Roku announced its own offering last year and continues to evolve its commerce strategy—Ferro said AI offers the potential to pivot from shoppable content that’s “QR-code based, which is a lot of what everyone does today, including us” to a “much more organic, seamless experience.” That experience would likely use AI to identify objects within content for viewers to purchase and offer a direct purchase process from the streamer’s interface. Ferro said Disney is “actively in that marketplace right now really trying to determine what is the best and most frictionless experience” that can match the scale of its suite of streamers. Watch: Ad sales leaders and more discuss future of TV Brian Albert, managing director of U.S. agency video at Google and YouTube, said current AI creative capabilities are simple, such as allowing a marketer to generate a vertical version of horizontally-oriented advertising so that it fits the format for YouTube Shorts. But Albert envisioned AI capabilities that would help both brands and influencers on YouTube be more reactive to the audience that they’re serving. “Whether you’re swapping out outfits during an edit or you’re removing background extras, I think AI’s generative capabilities and how they impact our creators' storytelling ambitions and raise their production value is what the future holds,” said Albert. 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.

How Disney and YouTube are experimenting with AI in video advertising

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