iWorld
Disney Advertising & The Trade Desk sign a significant advertising deal
Mumbai: Disney Advertising and global advertising technology company The Trade Desk have reached a landmark agreement to power greater audience activation at scale programmatically.
This deal enables brands to target automated ads across Disney’s linear and streaming properties – Hulu, ESPN+, Freeform, ESPN, National Geographic and FX. This announcement comes ahead of Disney’s launch of an ad-supported tier for Disney+ that would likely be another target for the deal.
This expanded deal marks yet another step toward transforming how advertisers access Disney’s portfolio of premium supply, rooted in secure data collaboration and powered by automation through Disney’s Clean Room technology. By offering clients more flexibility, choice and control across all deal types, Disney is delivering on its commitment to support addressability at scale.
This agreement will enable a first-of-its-kind integration between Disney’s proprietary Audience Graph and the open-source identity framework, Unified ID 2.0, within a secure environment. As a result, buyers will be able to discover more addressable, biddable inventory across the Disney portfolio, all validated by Disney’s proprietary Audience Graph.
“Disney Advertising had a bold vision backed by proven results from the start, and we’re thrilled to continue to deliver on our commitment to power greater automation and addressability for our customers through this expanded deal with The Trade Desk,” said Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution president advertising sales Rita Ferro. “We have spent years investing in our data and technology strategy to create innovative solutions for advertisers to engage their audiences with greater precision and accuracy in a privacy-focused way. This first-to-market capability sets the stage to empower access to the Disney portfolio, validated by powerful audience insights, in a way that’s automated and accessible.”
Disney continues to advance its efforts towards a data-informed, tech-enabled future rooted in audience innovation. For example, more than 40 clients and most major agencies across all major categories have engaged in Clean Room strategies in collaboration with Disney leveraging its Audience Graph.
Disney’s agreement with The Trade Desk is a key milestone in enabling greater interoperability with the programmatic ecosystem while setting the stage to power better audience activation and measurement. Moreover, it provides a path for advertisers to leverage their first-party data in biddable environments as the industry faces new disruption caused by the deprecation of third-party cookies.
“Disney is reimagining our advertising platform to support a global and addressable future. We are uniquely positioned to match the world’s greatest content with next-generation products and technologies, through a secure and unified ad platform, and one-of-a-kind first-party data. The growth of our relationship with The Trade Desk is a milestone in addressability and automated buying at scale, and the latest step as we use technology to enable advertisers to buy once to deliver everywhere across Disney,” said Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution president and chief technology officer Aaron LaBerge.
“With this agreement, Disney and The Trade Desk are pioneering a new approach to audience addressability in a post-cookie environment. By creating interoperability between Unified ID 2.0 and Disney’s Audience Graph, we are unlocking the opportunity for our customers to activate their first-party data at scale programmatically, against some of the world’s most premium content, across all channels. As a result, advertisers will be able to deliver relevant advertising, while ensuring consumers have more control of their privacy,” said The Trade Desk chief revenue officer Tim Sims.
Disney Advertising is implementing this expanded capability with advertisers over the next several months, while setting the stage to support interoperability across all demand partners and platforms.
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Snapchat parent Snap cuts 16 per cent of workforce in AI-driven restructuring
The Snapchat parent is axing around 1,000 jobs and closing 300 open roles to save $500m, as artificial intelligence makes smaller teams the new normal
CALIFORNIA: Snap is snapping. The Snapchat parent has confirmed plans to cut around 1,000 employees, roughly 16 per cent of its full-time workforce, as it bets that artificial intelligence can do what headcount once required. Shares jumped more than 10 per cent in premarket trading on the news, a brisk vote of confidence from a market that has watched the stock shed about 31 per cent this year.
The restructuring, which also closes more than 300 open roles, follows pressure from activist investor Irenic Capital Management, which holds an economic interest of about 2.5 per cent in the company and has been loudly pushing Snap to tighten its portfolio and lift performance. The firm got what it asked for, and then some.
Chief executive Evan Spiegel told employees the cuts would reduce annualised expenses by more than $500m by the second half of the year. The company expects to incur charges of between $95m and $130m related to the layoffs, mostly severance, with the bulk landing in the second quarter. Staff in Snap’s North America team were asked to work from home on the day of the announcement.
The financial backdrop is not without bright spots. Snap expects first-quarter revenue to rise around 12 per cent to approximately $1.53 billion, broadly in line with analyst estimates. Adjusted core profit for the January to March quarter is forecast at about $233m, comfortably ahead of Wall Street’s expectation of $186.8m.
The harder question surrounds Specs, Snap’s augmented reality smart glasses subsidiary, which Irenic has urged the company to spin off or shut down entirely. The unit has absorbed more than $3.5 billion in investment and burns through approximately $500m in cash annually. Snap is pressing ahead regardless, with a consumer product expected later this year, even as Meta leads the market in the segment.
Spiegel is betting that leaner teams, smarter machines and a consumer AR play can restore Snap’s credibility with investors who have run out of patience. The redundancy notices have gone out. The harder restructuring, the one that requires a hit product rather than a headcount reduction, is still very much pending.
