Disney’s AI ad push is picking up steam.
The company is preparing to launch a beta version of a tool for AI-generated TV ads in July, a Disney exec said at an internal meeting, according to an audio recording shared with Business Insider.
The entertainment giant originally shared news of the tool in January, as part of a broader CES announcement of upcoming tech-driven features for advertisers. Other major ad sellers, such as Google, Meta, and TikTok, have also rolled out AI ad-generation tools for advertisers.
Adam Smith, the chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, shared the timing update with employees during a product meeting last week. He said the AI tool can generate scripts, video, and music, and called it “one of the clearest areas where we’re really making traction.”
Smith said the ad tool was particularly geared to small and medium-sized advertisers that don’t have video assets. In its earlier announcement, Disney touted the tool’s ability to help brands create connected TV spots using their existing creative assets, letting them customize them by factors like audience and context while still providing a level of human oversight.
Smith said it would eventually be available through Disney’s self-service ad platform, a dashboard where advertisers can manage and run ad campaigns on Disney properties.
“You can think of this as everything from creation of scripts, video, and music, all that is in a single orchestrated workflow,” Smith said, according to the recording. “Every week they send me examples of these, and I will say every week the examples get better and better.”
Ashwin Navin, CEO of Samba TV, an ads measurement service, said a video ad-generation tool like Disney’s could open the company up to advertisers with smaller budgets.
Navin said these advertisers don’t have the budget to pay a “creative agency to come up with the perfect 30-second video.”
Alicia Weaver, VP of media activation at the media agency Mediassociates, said she’s started talking to clients about the Disney tool and sees it as a way to help advertisers customize their connected TV ads for different audiences.
“It takes time to create different versions,” she said. “Something that helps facilitate that in a more turnkey fashion is definitely a benefit.”
Advertisers have moved from the excitement phase of seeing AI’s promise to save time and money to fear of consumer backlash against so-called slop.
Mindful of that shift, Weaver said she wanted to learn how Disney would ensure the ads meet brands’ quality-control expectations, among other questions, before recommending the ad tool to clients.
“We’ve reached the point with AI where clients want to make sure their brand is represented correctly,” she said. “There’s a lot more scrutiny on AI now that we’ve seen what it can do. It’s not a shiny new object anymore.”
