TV Advertising: Disney ‘leverages streaming audience data to boost linear viewing’

Rita Ferro (Source: Disney)

Disney’s senior advertising exec has said that to tackle the current declining linear market the company takes advantage of its audience data gathered from its streaming operations to boost growth across its linear business. 

Speaking at the Future of TV Advertising Global by The Media Leader, president of Disney Advertising, Rita Ferro said, “The beauty of having it all and one ecosystem is that at Disney today we can actually take the audience segments that we’ve built with the data through streaming and actually leverage it for our linear businesses.”

Ferro explained where it draws a more older demographic from its linear networks and pulls younger audiences from its streaming brands such as Disney and the recently fully-acquired Hulu, it provides the benefit of having “incremental reach” which is attractive to advertisers.

She said, “its about reach and making sure that you’re getting the audiences that are delivering across the platforms that matter to the advertiser.”

“By the way linear absolutely still matters. Streaming has high growth. There’s a lot of companies trying to get into the streaming game, and they’re not in the AVOD business, they’re in the FAST, she added. “The FAST business is interesting, but it’s not a registered environment, so you don’t have data and targeting the same way.

The Disney chief also pointed to advertisers such as pharmaceuticals particularly in the US which favour linear, are making the crossover to streaming, increasing spending on advertising via streaming.

Disney+ recently introduced its ad-tier in the US last year, followed by launches in the UK and key markets in Europe last month, reaching a thousand advertising partners globally.

Since launching the Disney+ ad-supported tier, Ferro said there is an increasing appetite for advertising from consumers, after observing the rise Hulu when it first launched with ads, only later introducing an ad-free plan.

“I think we’ll only have more growth,” she said. “When we were launching here in EMEA,  we get very excited that everyone’s is going to want this, and every marketer is gonna want this, but we have to be thoughtful and manage the hockey puck that will eventually come, but it’s, it’s a slow ramp at the beginning. because again, you have to get so many things right. You have to get the product right, the work process flow right, all of the sign up flow right, and then launching the product.