It may be Halloween, but Disney Advertising has nothing to be afraid of: The media giant’s advertising arm reports it is set to surpass its total ad sales for holiday 2023, with this year's Disney+ holiday package pacing over 15% ahead.
To build on those gains, Disney Advertising today (Oct. 31) announced a geographic expansion for its holiday sponsorships on Disney+, taking them beyond North America to make them available across EMEA and Latin America for the first time. The news demonstrates how it continues to expand its streaming offering for advertisers in top categories including financial services, CPG, retail and apparel and healthcare around the globe. In Europe, Disney has provided cross-territory sponsorships for brands including Chloé, Uber Eats and L’Oréal Paris, with more to come.
“There are so many brands now that are inbound coming to us, saying, ‘Help us through thinking about our global strategy,’” said John Campbell, senior vice president of entertainment and streaming solutions for Disney Advertising. “The US is really helping our regional partners figure out how we all do this together, and for the brands who really mean it, the ones who really want global access to our audiences, we have solutions for them.”
Billions of hours — and dollars
The investment from ad partners like The Hershey Company and Reckitt-owned Mucinex follows the investment in time from an audience that consumed more than 10 billion hours of Disney’s entertainment content in the key October-November-December period last year, per Nielsen data shared by Disney.
Those billions of hours come as consumers prepare to spend more money on shopping than last year during the holiday season to the tune of the over $980 billion forecast by The National Retail Federation. Nearly nine in 10 Disney viewers plan to spend the same or more on shopping this year and have a positive opinion of holiday ads, while more than half draw ideas from holiday ads, per Disney survey data.
“We're really looking to be utilitarian for our consumers, and that's just not during the holiday season when there's peak buying, because people are buying every single day,” Campbell said. “We really want to celebrate every single day and create holidays every single day at Disney and have it feel celebratory, have social resonance and positivity show up like that.”
"We're in peak buying season right now... We're seeing brands come in every single day for our holiday offerings."
John Campbell
SVP for entertainment and streaming solutions, Disney Advertising
Marketers increasingly are teaming with Disney for full campaigns inclusive of sponsorship, co-branded slates, custom content and social media, as well as shoppable and commerce experiences, to drive both brand and purchase metrics.
“We're in peak buying season right now,” Campbell said. “We're seeing brands come in every single day for our holiday offerings.”
Hershey last year returned to Disney for a sponsorship around Halloween and saw two-times return on investment, helping to drive the company’s first billion-dollar Halloween season. In its first year as a Halloween sponsor, Mucinex this year became the first-ever brand to create cross-channel custom integrations across both Hulu’s Huluween and Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween content.
The gift of sports
Disney is not just a destination for entertainment across platforms like Disney+ but a major player in sports media, controlling a third of sports impressions from November 2023 to January 2024 — more than any other broadcaster, per Nielsen data shared by Disney.
The holiday season overlaps with key college football games, from Rivalry Week through to the expanded College Football Playoff, giving brands in retail, tech and CPG an opportunity to engage locked-in audiences around Thanksgiving, Black Friday and beyond.
“Our sports lineup this holiday season is designed to position brands at the center of fan excitement,” said Danielle Brown, senior vice president of sports brand solutions at Disney Advertising, in a statement. “We’re creating opportunities for brands to meet fans right where they are to celebrate the biggest moments of the season.”
Disney this year will incorporate shoppable QR code integrations across select rivalry match ups on ABC and ESPN, giving marketers another way to connect content to commerce as the two spaces continue to converge. Additionally, viewers of Huludays on Hulu will be able to “Shop the Scene” via a QR code powered by BrightLine and sponsored by Kroger.
"We’re creating opportunities for brands to meet fans right where they are to celebrate the biggest moments of the season."
Danielle Brown
SVP of sports brand solutions, Disney Advertising
Meanwhile, the convergence of entertainment and sports has already been a boon for Disney. The company’s combined streaming business posted an operating profit of $47 million in Q3 compared with a loss of $512 million in the same quarter last year — becoming profitable a quarter earlier than expected. Disney’s domestic streaming advertisers grew by more than 20% year over year, while programmatic revenue growth increased by over 80%, per details shared around the earnings.
The results are, in part, a testament to Disney’s work to demonstrate the results of its ad offerings.
“I think we've done a very good job with our research and proving out to our client partners that getting attached to some of these major tentpole events and being in the conversation is going to drive your bottom line,” Campbell said.
