Disney is also expanding its data-driven ad business, launching a programmatic exchange for video ads, leveraging its data for cross-channel targeting, and selling combined inventory across Hulu and Disney properties. They’re even promoting their own Disney Audience Graph as a partial replacement for third-party cookies. Isn’t everyone?
In a far different corner of the galaxy, Instacart announced a $265 million financing round for its pandemic-fueled online grocery business. The raise brings total funding to $2.7 billion and values the company at $39 billion. This has more to do with martech than you may think: some of the money will grow Instacart marketplace and advertising services that leverage its massive customer base.
Tighter privacy regulations were supposed to deter companies from sharing their customer data, right? But this Winterberry Group paper gives a mixed message: it reports that 64% of U.S. respondents are collaborating directly others to share their data in a second-party relationship. Yet at least as many are also licensing their data to third parties for targeting and measurement.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.