AI, Agility & Growth: The new agency playbook

Rita Ferro on Disney’s advertising strategy and competing with Big Tech

Justin Lebbon sits down with Rita Ferro, president of global advertising for the Walt Disney Company, for a candid conversation about the most competitive ad landscape she's seen in nearly three decades at the company. * Compete on value, not price. Ferro argues Disney doesn't have to chase the platforms diving on price because its inventory is largely sold out, anchored in premium storytelling, live events and a privacy-compliant ID graph. * The "messy middle." She frames the mid-market — advertisers ranked roughly 101 to 1,000, worth about half the market — as Disney's big growth engine, served by some 1,200 agencies and hungry for self-service and automation tools. * HoldCo dependence is shrinking. Disney's holding-company business is down 10–12% year on year and roughly 25% off its level five years ago, as automation, direct brand deals and mid-market grow. * Live and fandom drive revenue, not just audiences. From College GameDay to the Super Bowl and Grammys, Ferro details in-content integrations, social extensions and a Santa Monica takeover week around Super Bowl weekend. * Super Bowl pricing up again. Prices are rising another 20% next year, with demand far outstripping a finite supply of units. * AI in the ad stack. Ferro sees AI cutting the "hands on keyboard" burden of impression-level trading, powering real-time optimisation, and a forthcoming creative tool for mid-market marketers — while human oversight stays central to IP and storytelling. * International reality. Europe is 14 different Disney+ markets, not one; new markets need automated tools because sales teams can't be staffed at launch. KEY TAKEAWAYS * Disney says it competes on value rather than price, and is largely sold out across platforms thanks to premium content, live events and its first-party ID graph. * The mid-market tier (advertisers ~101–1,000, ~50% of the market) is Disney's key growth engine, requiring self-service tools and new ways to service ~1,200 agencies. * Holding-company business is declining — down 10–12% year on year and about 25% below its level five years ago — as automation, direct deals and mid-market rise. * Live drives revenue as much as audience, via in-content integrations and social/fandom extensions across TV, TikTok and Disney's own platforms. * Super Bowl ad prices are rising another 20% next year, with demand far exceeding a finite unit supply; Disney is building incremental inventory across its ecosystem. * AI is being applied to system automation, real-time campaign optimisation, algorithms and a new creative tool for mid-market advertisers, with humans still verifying content and IP.

NBCUniversal's Marshall: Universal Ads, BravoCon & the Measurement Mess

Mark Marshall, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, joins Justin Lebbon to unpack how premium video competes for spend against social and short-form platforms — and why data, not just content, is now the battleground. KEY TAKEAWAYS * NBCUniversal is betting that data (Performance Insights Hub) plus premium content is the only way to compete with social and short-form platforms. * The Hub combines linear and digital on one plan with reach, frequency and first/third-party KPIs; it rolls out in Q4 and, via FreeWheel, is intended to become an industry-wide standard. * Universal Ads, aimed at digital-first advertisers moving up from search and social, now generates tens of millions per quarter after 18 months from a zero base. * Diversification is essential: BravoCon (30,000 tickets, sold out in 90 seconds) and the LA28 sponsorship-plus-media partnership are meaningful new revenue streams. * Marshall argues advertisers moved to CTV too quickly — ~40% of US budget has shifted while ~89% of impressions still run on linear. * The US measurement 'crisis' — including Nielsen's Gauge report — confuses the market; Marshall's answer is real first-party data agreed across the industry.

Analysing SpaceX, Roku/Fox deal, Revenue urgency for AI

In this pre-Cannes episode of Unfiltered, Justin Lebbon and Ian Whittaker unpack a dramatic week of M&A and IPO activity. They examine what SpaceX's elevated valuation means for funding the AI and space "twin bets", why the public markets impose a discipline private players escape, and how that pressure could see AI giants come hunting for media's advertising revenues. They then turn to Fox's roughly $22bn acquisition of Roku, the market's sceptical reaction, and the wider wave of US-led media consolidation. Highlights: * SpaceX's valuation as a "virtuous circle": a high price justifies and fuels large-scale investment — and works in reverse if the price falls. * Musk's super-voting B shares mean investors effectively cede control and ride his coattails. * The combined SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic valuation sits north of $3.5tn — and to justify it, these companies must take revenue from somewhere, with advertising the obvious first target. * Why incumbent media firms are "trapped": shareholders punish the big investments needed to fight back (the ITV digital-rollout share-price drop as precedent). * Is this "performative capitalism"? Ian pushes back — he sees Musk as epitomising "dream big", with the US having outsourced much of its space policy to SpaceX. * Fox isn't buying shows — it's buying the home screen and the interface between viewers and ad revenue, plus a sports negotiating "choke point". * The market's 15%+ share-price fall signals fears of overpayment, execution risk and debt; the deal is cash-and-stock (~$14bn cash of ~$22bn, ~$96/share). * A wave of US consolidation — Paramount/WBD, Disney/Hulu, Fox/Roku — versus a slower-moving Europe (Sky/ITV, RTL/Sky Deutschland), with many sellers quietly seeking an exit. KEY TAKEAWAYS * SpaceX's elevated valuation is itself the funding mechanism — a virtuous circle where a high price makes large-scale investment look positive, and a falling price reverses it. * Musk's super-voting shares mean investors are betting on the man and ceding control, with no real voice in the decisions. * To justify combined valuations above $3.5tn, AI giants must grab revenue from elsewhere — and media advertising, a proven trillion-dollar model, is the first logical target. * Incumbent media companies are trapped: the investment needed to respond hits cash flows and spooks shareholders, as ITV's digital-rollout share-price fall showed. * Fox's Roku deal buys the home screen and the viewer-to-ad interface, not content — but a 15%+ share-price drop signals the market thinks Fox overpaid and is pricing execution risk and debt. * US media is consolidating fast (Paramount/WBD, Disney/Hulu, Fox/Roku) while Europe moves slower, with many sellers quietly looking for an exit.

AI, Agility & Growth: The new agency playbook

After 25 years in media — including a stint as CEO of PhD UK — Ali Reed made the jump from the holding-company world to independent agency Brainlabs. In this candid conversation with Justin Lebbon and Ian Whittaker, she explains why legacy structures, short-term KPIs and "shuffling spreadsheets" pushed her out, and how indies are building AI-native capabilities without decades of technical debt to retrofit. Highlights: * Why she left the holdco: Personal sacrifice (cancelled holidays, weekly commute from Malta) plus a professional frustration that real influence over the work had been replaced by "managing different parts of the system." * The indie advantage: No legacy infrastructure to retrofit, fewer layers of approval and politics, and the freedom to build AI capabilities cleanly. Brainlabs has partnered with Claude and Notion at enterprise level and published over 700 skills across its ~1,100-person global team in a few months. * Cortex and Cortex Labs: A centralised shared tech platform plus a decentralised mode where account directors and practitioners — not just the dev team — build and ship bespoke client tools in days. * AI as force multiplier, not headcount cut: Brainlabs frames AI as a route to "more for the same," not "more for less." Examples include "Ralph," a growth agent that helps smaller pitches over the line, and "Proteus," a creative variation tool that helped deliver 3x revenue on Meta for one client. * Brand vs. performance: Reed argues brand building isn't dead, but agencies have different "superpowers" — and clients need braver operating models that let an innovation/test-and-learn partner work alongside a stable global agency of record. * The platform threat: With most new media spend flowing to a handful of platforms (much of it direct), Reed says agencies add value through creative quality, first-party signals, early product access and accumulated test-and-learn muscle memory. * Her pitch question: Instead of asking agencies why they're great, she'd ask what they'd regret if they didn't win — a test of honesty over hyperbole. KEY TAKEAWAYS * Reed left a holdco CEO role partly because real influence over the work had given way to 'shuffling spreadsheets' and managing the system rather than improving client outcomes. * Independent agencies can build AI-native capabilities cleanly, without retrofitting onto decades of technical debt across acquired businesses. * Brainlabs frames AI as a force multiplier for more output, clients and revenue — not a tool for cutting headcount; it wants clients who want 'more for the same,' not 'more for less.' * Decentralised tooling (Cortex Labs) lets practitioners closest to the client problem build and ship bespoke tools in days, on the principle that 'innovation happens at the edge.' * As platforms automate the buying layer, performance is won or lost at the creative and first-party data layers — and on speed to market. * Clients should embrace braver operating models, letting an agile test-and-learn partner incubate ideas that a larger agency then scales, rather than choosing either/or.

How industry incentives, trading and measurement shape media quality and why it matters

Unfiltered returns from a spell on the sidelines with guest Erez Levin — speaker, writer and co-author of a major new paper on media quality — alongside hosts Justin Lebbon and Ian Whittaker. The conversation opens on the state of the ad market and a strong earnings backdrop, then digs into the core question: in a world of unlimited impressions, how do you know what you're buying, and why does quality matter? Highlights: * A two-tier ad market. Ian on the macro: 85%+ of S&P 500 companies beating earnings estimates, blended q1 growth pushing nearly 30% — the strongest quarter in around five years. Traditional advertisers growing mid-single digits, with the SME market still driving the platforms. * The consumer signal is mixed. Weak US consumer confidence, but PepsiCo cutting prices up to 15% and McDonald's flagging pushback — yet recession fears have repeatedly failed to materialise across 2024, '25 and '26. * The "quality trifecta." Erez frames marketing effectiveness as media quality, creative quality and audience/data quality — with the paper focused on media quality specifically. * Quality is a range, not a binary. Why Erez prefers "quality" to "premium," built around attention (prominence of placement) and context (user receptiveness — e.g. a McDonald's ad before vs. after dinner). * The race to the bottom. Billions going to muted videos in the bottom corner labelled as "in stream" ads, bought at the same price as full-screen sound-on inventory because buyers don't check. * Finance vs. marketing. How marketing trained finance teams to expect ever-lower CPMs — and why that metric is now used against marketing's own case. Cost is not what matters; value is. * Clock science vs. cloud science. Erez on treating marketing as deterministic when it's probabilistic, the move from multi-touch attribution toward econometrics and experimentation, and the death of the cookie-era illusion. * Beyond averages. YouTube as the case study — the top 5% as high quality as the best TV, but "the exception, not the rule." The fix: pricing on a few qualitative dimensions (time of day, channel/show, geo) rather than channel-level averages. * Transparency vs. quality. They're different things — high quality media can be opaque — but buyers increasingly need to validate what they're paying for. * Will the big three move? Justin presses on three platforms taking ~90% of new spend with little incentive to change. Erez: only their incentives will move them; build a parallel quality path for the enterprise buyers who care. KEY TAKEAWAYS * All impressions are not created equal — the paper's first principle and the foundation for assessing media quality. * Quality isn't binary or the same as 'premium'; it's a range driven by attention (placement prominence) and context (user receptiveness). * Buyers routinely overpay, paying the same CPM for muted, bottom-corner 'in stream' video as for full-screen sound-on ads — and often don't check. * Marketing trained finance teams to chase ever-lower CPMs, and that metric is now used against marketing; the fix is to argue value over cost and account for long-term brand building. * Channel-level averages hide huge quality variance (e.g. YouTube's top 5% vs. the rest); price on a few qualitative dimensions like time of day, show type and geo instead. * The big three platforms won't move first — only enough buyer dollars demanding quality will change their incentives, so build a parallel quality path for enterprise marketers.