How Disney is nearing its goal to automate 75% of ad sales by 2027

The Walt Disney Company plans to automate 75% of its advertising business by 2027. And the company took a further step toward that end in this year’s annual TV and streaming advertising upfront market.

“Of the streaming dollars that came in, of those billions of dollars, more than half of them are transacted programmatically,” Disney’s svp of addressable sales Jamie Power said on stage during the Digiday Publishing Summit in a session that served as a live recording for the Digiday Podcast.

A catalyst to the growth of Disney’s automation efforts this year was the parity that the company has created in making the breadth of its streaming inventory available for purchase programmatically. That includes, more recently, its interactive ad formats.

“Once we finally were able to enable them, within six weeks the spend was eight times the spend than the year before,” Power said.