Disney just took the next step on its journey to automate as much of its ad sales as possible by the end of this year.
To help reach that goal, Disney announced DRAX Direct, an expansion of its real-time ad exchange. DRAX Direct, unveiled on Wednesday, gives advertisers a direct path to Disney+ and Hulu inventory through The Trade Desk and Google’s DV360.
A direct connection to supply “adds more value to the buy side” for a few reasons, Jamie Power, SVP of addressable sales at Disney Advertising, told AdExchanger.
Direct paths can give advertisers more transparency into a publisher’s available inventory and audiences compared to what buyers get from supply-side platforms, which package supply from multiple publishers.
Plus, audience match rates are generally higher when middlemen aren’t involved.
Going direct also gives buyers a better idea of deduplicated reach and frequency between Disney and other publishers, such as YouTube, Power said.
Be direct
Through DRAX Direct, advertisers can match their own first-party data with Disney’s audience graph via integrations with The Trade Desk’s UID2 and Google’s PAIR framework.
Buyers can do the same type of data matching in DRAX through supply-side platforms, Power said, though “there might be a slightly lower match rate.”
Integrating directly with DSPs may sound a bit awkward considering one of Disney’s biggest SSP partners, Magnite, loudly touts Disney as a success story for its own direct supply path technology, ClearLine.
But disintermediation is not the intention. Direct paths are simply another option advertisers can choose from to access inventory the way they see fit, Stephen Yap, head of Google’s marketing platform in the Americas, told AdExchanger.
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Disney has many major national brand clients that “just want that direct connection,” Yap said. For Google, the goal is “making sure we’re enabling direct relationships between publishers and [their] advertisers,” he said.
Buy-side desire for direct paths is why The Trade Desk also considers its integration with DRAX Direct as an addition to its own supply-path optimization product, OpenPath, said Taylor Ash, GM of TV partnerships at The Trade Desk.
But don’t get it twisted: “SSPs are not going anywhere,” Ash said. DRAX Direct is simply “a much more transparent way [for] our buyers to connect into Disney [supply],” Ash said.
Starting small
DV360 and The Trade Desk may be Disney’s biggest DSP partners in terms of scale, but many smaller advertisers are dipping their toes into connected TV with DSPs that specialize in handling smaller media budgets.
That specialty is why Disney has partnerships with at least 30 DSPs, Power said.
Smaller DSPs are a significant source of ad dollars for Disney, she said, noting that it works with advertisers across the spectrum, from small and local buyers to mid-market advertisers. For example, mid-market advertisers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on streaming campaigns, including through Disney, Power said.
And because of the variety of demand sources, Power said, Disney doesn’t expect DRAX Direct to cannibalize demand from the SSPs it works with, like Magnite.
Consider DRAX Direct to be Disney’s way of removing technology barriers. Brands should be able to buy their Disney ad campaigns however they choose, Power said.
