Disney at CES 2026: CES 2026: House of Mouse Talks Dollars and Sense
At this year's CES, Global Tech and Data Disney produced an event that offered insight into a few of their latest public tech strategies, including how they are funneling data intelligence through their environment to provide real ROI for advertisers.
The event was designed to make the case to advertisers why buying placement with Disney is so compelling. However, it was also a chance to hear about how the company is thinking about what it means to run a modern media company in the world of data everywhere, AI, and changing consumer multi-screen behavior.
Every day, thousands of brands rely on Disney to connect them with just the right audience. No longer is this a world of things being too small or too big, but the data driving ROI has meant things can be just right. “Our technology is built for these behaviors, turning every click, vote and view into deeper and more meaningful experiences,” said Rita Ferro, President Global Advertising, Disney.
Personalizing Viewer Experiences
First up is their intent to personalize each consumer's viewing preferences. “Strategically, Disney+ is being repositioned as a personalized ‘portal to all things Disney,’” writes Laura Martin, Managing Director, Senior Media and Internet Analyst and Dan Medina, Equity Research Analyst in Needham's latest financial evaluation of the comings and goings at the House of Mouse.
“As we unify the Disney+ and Hulu experience, we’re doing so on a foundation of bolder and more dynamic personalization. We’re driving content discovery that complements each unique fan and exposes everyone to the full depth and breadth of our one-of-a-kind library,” said Erin Teague, Executive Vice President, Product Management, Disney. “Our machine learning and inference capabilities generate millions of personalized recommendations per second.”
The intent for Disney streaming is being able to create a special compelling world for each and every viewer. And of course, they will be matching advertising at scale to ensure they are able to fully monetize these millions of personalized viewing experiences.
Bringing Vertical Video to Disney
Disney is also examining various ways to focus viewer attention by tying multiplatform content (think mobile content, texting, and TV consecutive viewing) experiences together. One way they are doing this is by bringing vertical video to Disney.
Vertical content was first rolled out on the ESPN DTC app earlier this year. “Over the next year, we’re introducing vertical video experiences on Disney+. Think all the short-form Disney content you’d want in one unified app,” said Teague.
Disney EVP Product Management Erin Teague discusses vertical content on ESPN's DTC app (photo credit: Disney)
Measuring Impact
For years we have also been told that data will lead the way to better viewing, better advertising, and more operational efficiencies. The problem has often been finding the right meaning in this data. The upshot is measurement has not always translated into progress for advertisers.
Dana McGraw, SVP of Data and Measurement Science, reported that their measurement portal Disney Compass tracks measurements for nearly 100 billion impressions across thousands of campaigns. "This portal is a powerful new hub where advertisers will see their campaign results alongside category benchmarks and real-world industry norms, in one consolidated view. Marketers want to better understand the connection between signals such as attention, intent, and conversion.”
Disney SVP Data and Measurement Science Dana McGraw discusses impression tracking on Disney Compass (photo credit: Disney)
Disney has announced a new Disney Advertising Brand Impact Metric which synthesizes the most common KPIs. The expectation is brands can see what’s working, understand why, and then optimize while campaigns are live.
“More than ever, marketers need a better bridge between brand building and performance, and data can serve as the insight layer across campaigns and tactics,” said McGraw. “When brands can connect ad exposure to direct results, marketers gain clarity on not just what drove results, but how. The vision of the Disney Advertising Brand Impact Metric is to connect all pieces of the measurement puzzle in a single metric for advertisers to get a total view of what matters.”
Creative Intent
The use of AI in media production is an ever-changing, often touchy subject, but the use of AI in advertising is a much easier conversation to understand. Advertising production is one area in which Disney is beta testing AI to allow brands to create high-quality, CTV-ready commercials using existing brand assets and guidelines with their new video generation tool.
While other companies also have this capability, they don't have the inventory Disney has, so how this is received by consumers should be something to watch. The idea is advertisers can develop creative versioning by audience, context, and placement informed by performance signals within the spot.
“This isn't just an AI model creating clips. The magic is in the work we are doing under the hood," said Tony Donohoe, EVP Ads Platform, Disney. "We’re orchestrating multiple models, working together, in a single agentic workflow. There is a model driving the script, creating the storyboards, and another driving audio and music and generating the video. All taking into account your vision for mood, tone, visual style. All with your oversight and ours."
AI, Operations, and Data
“Today, in many cases, an RFP looks a lot like it did a decade ago. It’s sent to a planner [and] that kicks off a manual workflow with multiple iterations back and forth. As you know, it can take weeks," said Donohoe. "And this happens tens of thousands of times a year. It’s important work, but it can be a tedious, error-prone, and time-consuming process that has not evolved as fast as the industry around it.”
To address this Disney has introduced a new AI-powered internal tool. This planning tool takes input and an agent processes input and generates an optimized plan. It can take somewhat unstructured data in whatever format it is supplied and use it to generate something which would match industry requirements and even surface new ideas which might not have been considered.
Ad buyers interact with this tool through a chat agent interface, so instead of asking ChatGPT about how a competitive product might be reaching an audience, they can now have interactive conversations about their ad campaign outcomes. One issue Disney didn’t address in their discussion of this tool at CES is what their guardrails look like. Are there questions you can't ask it?
Measure Everything
Part of Disney’s unique sales proposition, as discussed at the company’s CES event, is the range of placement opportunities it offers advertisers in a unified ad-buying experience across multiple categories of premium entertainment content.
“Only Disney can connect an Indiana or Ole Miss college football fan cheering for her favorite team, then find her pulled into the craft of food culture while watching The Bear on Hulu, then streaming Moana 2 on family movie night with her kids," said Ferro. "Three moments. One fan. And through our single, unified ad tech platform, we can understand and reach her, with the right ad, at the right time. That’s the Disney difference: data, tech, and storytelling working together to connect culture in ways only Disney can."
The unspoken message during the presentation was how user data which is being tracked through the content viewing on Disney+, ESPN, Hulu, and Fubo will create additional value for Disney. This portal to all things Disney “will help DIS collect more data about wealthy consumers in both the physical and virtual worlds,” report Needham’s Martin and Medina. “This ongoing premium and proprietary data set can be sold to LLMs as a new revenue stream, we believe.”
I'm sure this isn't just wishing upon a star, but potentially great outcomes may indeed emerge from a major media company fully moving from the Disney of the past to the personalized, data-driven Disney of the future.
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