SAN JUAN — Spending $52.4 billion to acquire 21st Century Fox would be pretty transformational by anyone’s standards.<\/p>\n

For Disney, the acquisition a year ago added\u00a0to an already-broad portfolio of assets, and came right as the company was figuring out a direct-to-consumer SVOD strategy and learning to get to grips with a whole new world of advertising capabilities.<\/p>\n

In this Beet Retreat interview with\u00a0Janus Strategy & Insights president\u00a0Howard Shimmel for Beet.TV, Disney’s\u00a0SVP, Audience Solutions at Disney Advertising Sales,\u00a0Laura Nelson, opens up on a big year for the Mouse.<\/p>\n

“Disney, as a whole, is going through a huge transformation right now,” she said. “We have a ton of operational challenges because we are effectively still in the middle of reorganizing our whole company.<\/p>\n

“We have multiple systems and multiple process, and we potentially may be inheriting new ones. So just trying to streamline and create a technology stack and a data stack that is unified across our company is going to take us some time. We’re behind some of the other larger publishers … who have already gone through that.”<\/p>\n

Those changes are coming about including through combining ESPN and ABC ad sales efforts<\/a>\u00a0in a single division, led by Disney’s chairman of direct-to-consumer and international efforts Kevin Mayer. Nelson said: “We’ve actually changed the way the whole company is set up now so that there will be one group and on infrastructure that’s going to do that across sales and marketing.”<\/p>\n

Nelson said a big part of the transformation involves growing a desire to be more transactional and automated in a data-driven way. She wants to\u00a0eliminate friction in the ad sales process and believes automation can bring benefits for both buyer and seller.<\/p>\n

But, despite fragmentation in how the industry is approaching that opportunity, Nelson is sceptical that a single industry platform can be achievable.<\/p>\n

Nelson concedes Disney is arriving late to the idea of selling ads based on advanced audience data segments across different TV networks, in a way that makes it seamless for buyers.<\/p>\n

For instance, Disney’s ABC is not a member of OpenAP<\/a>, the joint Turner\/Fox\/ Viacom initiative to normalize consumer identity attribute descriptions, which was also joined by NBCU, though of course 21st Century Fox’s Fox Networks Group is plugged in.<\/p>\n

But she also questioned whether such an opportunity can work when who is paying for it isn’t necessarily clear.<\/p>\n

Nelson says she aims to unify consumer data sets including ESPN sports affinities, Disney lookalike models, theme parks, Disney gamers and, later, digital viewing.<\/p>\n

“A lot of different divisions – from the film studio to ABC Television – have been doing it their own way,” she says.<\/p>\n

“I think really bringing all the processes together, being uniform, and not having people create their own ideas is going to be more beneficial.”<\/p>\n

This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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