• by Wayne Friedman , March 20, 2024

For the first time, Walt Disney is allowing direct access of its programmatic platform -- Disney Real-Time Ad Exchange (DRAX) -- with two of the largest demand-side platforms (DSP): Google's Display & Video 360 and The Trade Desk.

Google and The Trade Desk will be Disney’s launch partners in this effort, called DRAX Direct -- providing those platforms’ advertisers with a new way to directly purchase Disney’s connected TV (CTV) inventory. 

Disney says this is a new level of automation that will unify access to streaming inventory across Hulu and Disney+ “for advertisers of all sizes.”  

Until this time, Disney has had ad inventory relationships only with supply-side platforms like Magnite. Going forward, the belief is that for Disney's overall programmatic strategy, supply-side platforms still have value -- especially for those SSPs that can amass enough advertiser demand from smaller DSPs.

“Disney’s goal is to empower advertisers to transact with the freedom and flexibility that best suits their business needs,” said Jamie Power, senior vice president of addressable sales, Disney Advertising, in a release.

Will Doherty, vice president of inventory development of The Trade Desk, said in the release that this is a logical extension of integration efforts of the DSP's open internet identity graph -- Unified ID 2.0 -- with that of  Disney’s Audience Graph., which started in July 2022.

In July 2023, Disney began a similar deal testing its Disney Audience Graph with that of Google's Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR).

Disney started up DRAX as an advertising-technology platform in March 2021, as a way of centralizing and creating “parity” for its ad inventory -- that of direct-sold advertising deals and programmatic ad deals, “allowing them to compete on an equal playing field.”