Disney Ad Sales Strongest At Upfront, Records $9 Billion
Disney’s upfront advertising process ended with a record $9 billion in ad sales – 40% of which came from streaming and digital. Disney has become the latest publisher to finish upfront.
This is the first year Disney has offered Disney+ as an advertising option. The forthcoming ad-supported tier of Disney+ was cited by the company as a game-change and particular strength among its platforms, which also include ABC, Disney Channels, ESPN and ESPN+, Freeform, FX, Hulu, and National Geographic.
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What is an Upfront?
Uninitiated viewers may not know that broadcast and cable networks hold spring events to promote their new programming lineups. As a classic futures market, the idea is to entice media buyers to commit to ad contracts for shows months or even years down the road. To put it another way, they buy inventory in advance.
Disney at the Upfront
The 2022-23 upfront posted the second straight year of double-digital gains in sports volume and pricing.
The CPM(cost per thousand viewers reached) increased in streaming, sports, broadcast, and cable, the company said, with prime seeing double-digit increases and high single-digit increases in addressable ads. In contrast to traditional advertisements, addressable ones can be targeted based on a person’s purchase history or other factors far beyond their age and gender.
The company also said it secured DEI commitments from every top-performing categories included Diversified Consumer Services, financial services, media & entertainment, pharmaceutical, sports gaming, and travel & leisure. The demand for Disney HuluXP, an integrated video ad platform across the Disney portfolio, also increased. Rita Ferro, president of ad sales for Disney Media and Entertainment said in a statement,
“Disney Advertising entered our 2022-2023 upfront committed to executing on our strategic priorities – streaming, multicultural and inclusion, sports and entertainment – and we delivered.
I am proud to partner with all of our clients to reach audiences at scale across all screens, and alongside the most premium content.”
The upfront process has been unlike most previous years for all of the major media companies. Traditionally, the upfront sales should wrap in the spring instead it dragged into summer this year. With streaming the ritual has become more complex and less calendar-based, allowing network parents to weather the ongoing decline in traditional bundles and overall live tv viewing.
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What is important for Disney?
Ferro gave Adweek an overview of Disney’s upfront priorities in May and said,
“The upfront was really about how do we tell a big-picture story of the volume of content coming from the Walt Disney Company because we have a lot of different endpoints, and we’re the home of streaming in a way that no one else has in the marketplace, premium storytelling in the streaming space with Hulu that has been around for 14 years. But since it was integrated and we took operational control a couple of years ago, it has been a driver of the AVOD opportunity in the marketplace.”
The new ad-supported tier would be coming to Disney+ later this year and would be launching internationally next year.He also explained that it will have an average of four minutes of commercials per hour.
“The reason for that is we know most people come to Disney+ for our movies, and movies have a different ad load than a series would. So what drives Hulu is more series. What drives Disney+ is more consumption of movies, and therefore the ad loads will look different. So it’ll be an average of four minutes an hour, but it depends on the types of content you stream.”
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Spotify Ends The Search For Promo Code With Its In-App Offers Feature
Spotify has recently announced its new feature. It will end customer hustle to search for a promo code online. Customers can buy a subscription of their favourite podcasts with on discounted prices with these promo codes.
Now, the customer will see an embedded link on the podcast. Just by clicking on this embedded link, the customer will be able to avail the promo-code. The link will automatically redirect the customer to advertiser’s website. Once the customer is on the website of the advertiser, the site will automatically detect the promo-code and will show you the discounted price.
Currently, Spotify is testing its “In-App Offers” feature. It will be a great relief for the consumer. Now, they don’t have to remember the promo code and march from pillar to post to get discounts.
According to Spotify, this is just the beginning of its interactive advertisement. The company states that they are researching for more ways to “create more of a direct funnel for brands.” It will create a strong impact and bring more live audiences to the Spotify platform in search of promo code.
Jay Richman, Head of ads business and platform at Spotify stated,
I think you could start to then piece together what a potential roadmap could look like, just based on the model with which we view this opportunity.
So, it is one step in a larger innovation path to productize the coupon code.
The first test conducted on Harry’s in the United States of America. The podcasts which participated was “Last Podcast on the Left and with Hello Fresh in Germany on the podcast Herrengedeck.” The promo code will be visible to a limited number of listeners. It will be visible only during the campaign time frame.
Spotify started inserting advertisements in podcasts from the month of January. They did this using their Streaming ad insertion technology. This technology is also known as SAI.
SAI inserts ad to the podcasts when people are listening to them. The SAI technology is advance and targets the audience based on their demographic and data-driven synergy.
Now, with SAI, Spotify is planning to expand its advertisement market in the US and some parts of Germany. SAI is a Spotify owned technology and is currently possesses an approximation of 100 monetizable shows.
It will give an upper hand to Spotify in capturing the advertiser market. Hence, it will lead to advertiser’s spending more money. Spotify will make sure that advertisers get better results for their advertisement.
For now, Spotify has opened the window for advertisement on the shows in its purview. Although, there are chances that Spotify might open the gates to the outside world and may charge revenue for the ad sales.