Disney Has A New Tool To Fight Data Fragmentation

Disney is using the Consumer and Electronics Show in Las Vegas to demonstrate its data and programmatic prowess to media buyers before the first information is released.

Hey, it’s never too early to start planning.

On Monday, Disney released a new advertising product called Disney Compass designed to give shoppers faster and more direct access to Disney data in addition to data from Disney’s identity and measurement partners.

Having to buy, plan and measure through multiple vendors is too fragmented, said Nick Winfrey, Disney’s director of data science and strategy, and data fragmentation is cumbersome for advertisers.

“[We] it needed a lot more interoperability between data systems,” Winfrey told AdExchanger, which requires creating joint product plans with partners.

At launch, Disney Compass is compatible with several vendors, including VideoAmp, Affinity Solutions, LiveRamp and Snowflake. But the plan is for the product to work with any identity and measurement vendor, Winfrey said, adding that Disney expects to sign new data partners for Disney Compass in the near future.

Disney data direction

Each new data partner a buyer uses typically adds another leap in the planning and measurement pipeline and creates “different perspectives” between data vendors, Winfrey said.

The result is “swivel chair automation,” he said, as in the case of marketers who have to collect data across multiple dashboards, each with its own automated process — which is very time-consuming. Sometimes statistics take so long to generate that the campaign is already done when they are ready.

Disney is trying to solve this problem with Disney Compass, which is directly integrated with Disney Campaign Manager (formerly known as Hulu Ad Manager).

Using Disney Compass, buyers can instantly generate reports from different data vendors to compare reach across different campaigns in the same time period and shift budgets as needed, Winfrey said. The tool should also give buyers a better understanding of hit curves, which help determine the ideal time, place and target audience to serve ads, he said.

By reducing the time it takes to build an audience plan and compare results across data sources, buyers can optimize their campaigns in time to meet their goals, whether it’s incremental reach or ROI.

Being more efficient also helps brands justify their marketing efforts within the C suite, which in turn should help Disney generate more ad spend among existing customers and attract new ones, Winfrey said.

Disney Compass is currently in beta and available to a select handful of advertisers and media buyers for early feedback, with plans to make it generally available later this year.

Disney will share more updates to its data and ad maps during its fifth annual Tech and Data Showcase at CES in Las Vegas on Wednesday. AdExchanger will be there, so stay tuned.