Can Big Media Companies Like Disney Compete with Big Tech on AI?

The Mouse House Wants to Embrace AI Media Buying - and So Do the Big Agencies

For all the hype about artificial intelligence revolutionizing the ad creative process and eliminating all this cumbersome grunt work agencies and brands hate, the place AI has really taken off is in media buying and optimization. To review:

• Google has Performance Max, which advertisers have fully embraced, even if they’re not sure how it works

• Meta has Advantage+, which ad buyers say has helped Facebook campaigns perform better than ever, so much so that the company talks it up during earnings calls

• Pinterest has an AI media buying tool, as does TikTok and Amazon

Now add to that list Disney, which during a slew of data and tech announcements at CES introduced Disney Select AI Engine, which the company says, is:

“a cutting-edge tool for brands to build custom lookalike audiences and deliver sequential messaging — all while expanding reach and without impacting frequency caps. The Disney Select AI Engine uses machine learning to drive accurate results.”

Sounds cool. As Jamie Power, Disney’s SVP, Addressable Sales, explained on my podcast this week, the Disney Select AI Engine “allows us to use AI to help generate audiences that we think are going to deliver on [a brand’s] outcomes,” she said. This should improve the effectiveness of data-driven media campaigns,” she said.

So it’s not exactly akin to Google or Meta’s ‘we’ll do the whole media plan for you tools’ - I think.

“The premise of using AI for agencies is to recommend targets that are going to drive a client's business versus waiting for a client to tell you what the target is, to be able to go to your client and say, ‘I understand your business,’” Power said.

If I am understanding that correctly, it sounds at though thanks to Disney’s technology, growing data footprint, and new AI tools, the media company will be able to help brands find audience targets potentially better than they can on their own - which would be pretty powerful and even transformative.

Yet this raises a bunch of interesting questions:

• Will brands and agencies want to cede this kind of target-decision-making and optimization to the likes of Disney? Or would they prefer to do it themselves?Consider that, as part of Disney’s CES announcements, the company unveiled a new deal with ‘Publicis CoreAI’ to integrate its tech with Disney’s new Compass data tool. That all sounds innovative and promising - but also makes me wonder…

• Are the Publicises of the world going to want to tell their clients that they handed all of their tactical decisioning to a Disney? Or talk up the power of their own AI tools, which they all claim are backed by zillions of consumer data points that can be used for optimization, automation, etc.? Especially considering how much they are investing in these platforms.

  After all, Brian Lesser, GroupM’s new global CEO, put it at an Adweek event at CES, in five years we’re likely to be in a world where “media buyers won’t touch media plans.”

  I’m going to assume that doesn’t mean that in five years, GroupM is planning to just cease to have a role in where their clients’ budgets are spent.

So:

• Are we headed toward a world defined by AI vs. AI standoff between buyers and sellers, or perfect machine-to-machine lovemaking?

• If we are truly headed to a world where we all use AI “agents” to do stuff (which I have some doubts about, is it possible that agencies and media companies will just let their agents sort things out? Will AI agents go to the upfronts?

• To be fair, you might say, ‘brands and agencies already hand over their media buying keys to Meta and Google, what’s the difference?’ True, but my question here is - is Disney’s AI media platform going to be as good as Meta’s or Google or Amazons? Will it be powered by enough data? Will it handle enough transactions to learn from?

• How many other media companies will be able to make these kinds of investments? Can Paramount play in this game, for instance? Fox? AMC+? After all, Disney boasts its own ad server, streaming platforms, audience graph, etc. How many other media cos can make that claim?

  “Disney is a technology company,” argued Power. “We're a content company, but we're also a technology company. And we've invested in the technology to make sure that we can deliver meaningful experiences for our fans and our viewers and our audiences.” My assumption is most other media companies won’t be able to make that claim, but I could be wrong. After all - based on yesterday’s news, it’s apparentlt super easy to build AI!

• Here’s another question/caveat regarding the coming AI Media Buying/DataWars. TV advertising isn’t just about conversion rates and transactions (or at least, it isn’t today). It’s about reach, awareness, driving brand image, etc. Can AI optimize toward these kind of campaign metrics as effectively as it seems to be able to drive clicks, sales, etc.?

That remains to be seen.

One area where Power sees a clear distinction between what Disney is building and the big walled gardens is the level of control and transparency available to brands.

“You're always going to have to have a person pull the insights out and figure out how to action on them,” she said. “We're not replacing jobs. I think we are taking away some of the tasks that we don't need to do to free up more time for us to be more thoughtful in what we do. So [with this] tool, there is still a person that's in there querying it and building the audience. It's not like a robot building a media plan.”

Not yet at least.