Disney’s Tech and Data Showcase—AI tools, live sports updates and other takeaways for advertisers

For the second year, Disney brought its annual Tech and Data Showcase to CES’s main stage, previewing new capabilities such as AI-powered dynamic ads in live sports and global audience targeting as well as giving its first numbers for ad-supported streaming users. “Everyone in this room is feeling the tectonic shifts of our industry,” said Rita Ferro, president of global advertising at Disney, during the showcase, the company’s fifth overall. “And while we can anticipate that 2025 will be a year of significant change, there is one perennial truth that will always anchor us: advertisers deserve real partnership, transparency and meaningful innovation that they can count on to yield results for their business.” Here are the top takeaways from Disney’s 2025 Tech and Data Showcase for advertisers. Read Ad Age’s 2025 predictions stories here ESPN flagship ad products Live sports and events have become the centerpiece for streamers looking to grow their advertising businesses. The transition has been slow over the past few years, notably with Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football,” the collection of exclusive games that have seen big numbers on platforms such as Peacock and Netflix’s recent NFL games and boxing matches. Disney is anticipating this to be a major pull for its ad business with the launch of the ESPN flagship streamer set for later this year. The platform will host all of ESPN’s linear feeds as well as ESPN+ content, and Disney announced that it will launch with real-time programmatic buying as well as the ability to serve different ad creative to targeted audiences in the same ad slot. The platform will also use AI to personalize content for viewers, which Adam Smith, Disney’s chief product and technology officer, said will become more sophisticated on all Disney streamers in time, as well as betting, commerce and fantasy. Going global As streamers continue to grow their global presence, how advertisers can use that scale hasn’t always been clear. Last year, Expedia was the first to make an international buy with Netflix, rolling out a campaign with specific creative suited for various markets. Disney announced new ways for marketers to take advantage of Disney+’s global presence. Through an expansion of the Disney Select audience segments, advertisers can now target an international audience informed by Disney research that found culture is increasingly becoming cross-cultural. NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today AI is the phrase of the night As part of the audience segment expansion, Disney also announced Disney Select AI Engine, an automated tool to generate audience targets among Disney’s data based on predictions for best achieving marketers’ goals as well as to power the ability to serve ad creative sequentially to viewers over time. Additionally, the Mouse House announced new interactive ad formats, such as Pause Plus ads, which allow the user to control when they see shoppable, gamified and trivia ads. Automation also plays into Disney’s Experience Composer, which enhances ad creative throughout the campaign based on real-time feedback. AI is also the core of Disney’s Magic Words, a tool initially launched during last year’s Tech and Data Showcase that pairs ads with relevant scenes in shows and movies based on their emotional or visual content. Now, Magic Words will also be available for live sports and events. Brands will be able to serve the correct variant of an ad when there’s an upset in a football game, for example, or when a particularly moving speech is given at the Oscars. AI selects the correct ad to run in the context. Disney has begun testing Magic Words Live with Magna Global, and its clients including Chipotle and T-Mobile. Size matters How many subscribers a streaming platform has, much less how many of those are ad-supported, can be difficult to parse. While Disney shares its total subscriber numbers in quarterly earnings reports (122.7 million international Disney+ subscribers and 52 million domestic Hulu subscribers according to its Nov. 14 financial report), its ads team broke down its ad-supported reach during the CES presentation. Disney’s streaming platforms reach 157 million ad-supported global monthly active users—112 million in the U.S.—inclusive of its three bundled streamers Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, Disney announced. The numbers represent accounts across the three platforms that have viewed more than 10 seconds of content, multiplied by an estimated 2.6 users per account, according to Disney. Monthly active users has become an increasingly popular metric for streaming platforms to report ad-supported reach to marketers and Wall Street as media companies increasingly phase out reporting on subscriber numbers. In November, Netflix reported that its ad-supported tier reaches 70 million global monthly active users, and Amazon Prime Video has repeatedly stated that it reaches 115 million ad-supported users in the U.S. and over 200 million globally. Also read: Which ad metrics matter most in 2025 Automate and consolidate As of late, the TV ad market mantra has been fast and easy, with media companies and agencies launching new tools and platforms for further automating ad buying and simplifying the complex TV market. Over the past few years, Disney has been full steam ahead on automating its processes, accomplishing an initial goal to automate 50% of its ad sales business by the end of 2024 and now aiming to automate 75% by 2027. To start the week, Disney announced that it would make live sports inventory on its streamers available for programmatic buying. Access is made possible through a certification program of three demand-side platforms, Google’s Display and Video 360, The Trade Desk and Yahoo, and allows for fast trading should a game go into overtime, for example. Disney also announced a new dashboard for marketers to view aggregated data from Disney and third-party vendors for campaigns with the company. The platform, called Disney Compass, provides real-time data on active campaign performance as well as the ability to track specific goal-based metrics such as return on investment and engagement. Marketers can integrate select third-party data providers at launch including Affinity Solutions, LiveRamp, Snowflake and VideoAmp. Disney Compass can also be integrated into agencies’ and advertisers’ owned planning tools.

Disney’s Tech and Data Showcase—AI tools, live sports updates and other takeaways for advertisers

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