Yes, Chef! The Disney ad boss on how Hulu is helping bring more viewers to the table.

Disney's President of Global Advertising, Rita Ferro, is on the latest episode of The Media Mix podcast.

With Hulu now fully under the Disney umbrella and plans afoot to re-imagine the ESPN platform for gaming and sports betting, Disney’s ad woman in the hot seat, Rita Ferro, has never been busier.

We caught up with the stylish president of global advertising at Cannes Lions earlier this month, and she told The Media Mix podcast that the ad market is much healthier than last year, when marketers held back in the absence of entertainment shows because of the Hollywood labor strikes.

(Variety reported that Disney is aiming to take much more of marketers’ ad budgets this year in return for offering lower rates than last year - a move that has irked competitors.) “This year the market is better, sports continues to be solid with growth and yet you’re seeing entertainment dollars come back into the marketplace.,” Ferro told me.

An ad source said, “Because Disney has Hulu they have good deals, they are the favorite citizen,” while rival Paramount is hurting. Not everyone is in a position to roll-back upfront rates.

Hulu arrived inside the Disney+ tile in the US in March and it’s driven an increase in engagement for Disney+ consumers. “It’s also grown the Hulu stand alone product,” said Ferro.

So where is Disney’s focus as it tries to compete with global tech behemoths?

“There’s a much broader focus on the global,” Ferro tells The Media Mix podcast, adding that marketers are trying to find new consumers (versus persuading existing customers to spend more) and that corporate growth is very much the mandate of 2024.  Of course, trying to figure out measurement globally can’t be an easy part of this new international push, but Ferro is prioritizing doing business with as little friction as possible, she said.

To be clear, Disney is up against some growing threats. There’s a glut of impressions and no must buys in the market, said this one ad executive. Amazon’s Prime Video, under former NBCU sales executive Krishan Bhatia, is flooding the video market with new cut price ad inventory.

Netflix, under former Hulu ad executive Peter Naylor, is picking up new subscribers for its ad plan. Both companies were a visible force at Cannes Lions this year. (Amazon is rumored to have spent tens of millions of dollars on its huge event space, according to one expert.) 

The ESPN app

Disney is leveraging its dominance in live sports and is rethinking its ESPN app as a new immersive experience that could allow fans to nerd-out on their preferred stats - like comparing how tall players are - all from the app versus heading to Google.  

“Those are the types of experiences that we see, but there’s so much more to come,” teased Ferro. “ESPN is really about how we drive incremental opportunity around not only the live game, but everything else we talked about, fantasy, social, gamification, sharing, sports betting, that really makes a sports fan’s place and destination that one app.” 

Ferro notes that women’s live sports is now a must buy for marketers. ESPN invested in the WNBA decades ago and now viewership is exploding thanks to players like Caitlin Clark.  WNBA games are averaging 1.32 million viewers across the Disney networks, ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 as well as CBS, the New York Post reported earlier this month. 

AI is helping Disney’s ad targeting as the company moves as many as 40,000 pieces of creative around its linear and digital networks and its social media partners. (ESPN is the number one brand on TikTok.) Marketers are creating many more versions of commercials than before as the business transitions from one spot targeting many, to many sports targeting individuals. Personalization is the marketing buzzword of 2024.

Ferro mentions the company’s tech and data showcase which underscored where Disney is headed around creative versioning. “We take a scene and we understand the emotion in the scene and we find the right moment,” and knowing more about the consumer, “could potentially merit a different version of an ad.” 

Ferro has much more to share on the podcast on why ABC’s Presidential debate falls at an opportune time for advertisers. Listen wherever you get your audio fix.

Thanks as ever to Executive Producers

Jamie Maglietta

and Ray Hernandez and all at Situation Room Studios Inc. Check-out their politics podcasts and give them a call if you want to start your own podcast series.