Disney Advertising and measurement firm EDO, whose co-founder and chairman is the actor and director Edward Norton, have expanded their relationship into the streaming realm.
The companies have reached a new agreement to apply engagement data from EDO to Disney’s streaming platforms, starting with Hulu. Last month, Disney+ also added a subscription tier with ads.
The partnership news comes on the day Disney’s ad division convenes its annual “tech and data showcase,” which will be held virtually. Norton is appearing in a 5-minute video segment during the event to explain his involvement and how EDO is working with Disney.
The companies see the deal yielding more insight for advertisers about how Disney’s premium content translates into consumer engagement and performance.
Unlike some other measurement vendor deals struck with media companies lately, the EDO-Disney pact isn’t a direct attempt to compete with Nielsen, which has come under fire but remains the market leader for viewership measurement. EDO’s data is generally seen as complementary to Nielsen’s stats, but with streaming enabling the same decision-making of digital advertising, outcomes from ad placements are important to understand. Targeting specific consumers is the big opportunity in streaming, as opposed to the traditional “spray and pray” approach in broadcast TV.
EDO, short for Entertainment Data Oracle, was founded in 2014 by entrepreneur Daniel Nadler, who is Norton’s friend. With the creative community increasingly in need of a range of data in order to determine compensation and profit participation, Norton cast his lot with the company and has been an outspoken advocate for it on social media.
By working with EDO, Norton said in a press release, “Disney can know and predict the effectiveness of Convergent TV campaigns.”
Danielle Brown, SVP, Data Enablement and Category Strategy, Disney Advertising, said with the expanded team-up with EDI, “We are bringing insights to brands based on the largest and most leaned-in audiences in live sports and events to show the impact of an ad exposure in streaming on cross-screen digital behavior like search and site visits.”
Disney has used EDO to gauge outcomes for tentpole events and live sports like The Academy Awards, American Music Awards, ESPN’s Monday Night Football and college football playoff games.
“EDO’s outcome-based measurement metrics alongside Disney’s vast linear and streaming catalog provides an alternative signal of outcome based ad performance that’s both simple and immediate,” said Michael Piner, EVP Advanced Advertising, Mediahub Worldwide. ”This partnership helps build a solid foundation for industry adoption of new outcome based measurement metrics that allow us to understand Convergent TV ad performance.”
