Disney used the glare of CES to send a clear message to marketers: in its streaming future, the creative format and the yardstick for success are both up for reinvention. The company’s annual Tech & Data Showcase in Las Vegas unveiled a pair of closely linked adtech updates with big implications for brand storytelling and measurement: vertical video ads coming to Disney+ and a new Brand Impact Metric that promises a single, outcome-focused view of performance across its portfolio.
Vertical video is the most visible change, and it’s heading straight into one of the most premium environments in streaming. Building on the “verts” experience it rolled out in the ESPN app last year, Disney will introduce a personalized, vertical video feed inside Disney+ in the U.S. later this year. The format is designed as a dynamic, scrollable stream of short-form content — spanning entertainment, news and potentially sports highlights — optimized for mobile viewing and modeled on the feeds that have reshaped consumer behavior on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Disney+’s vertical feed will mix original short-form pieces, repurposed social clips and re-cut scenes from existing films and series, according to the company’s CES announcement. The goal is to increase daily engagement, particularly among younger viewers who live in vertical mode, by making it easier to dip in and out of Disney’s catalog in snackable increments. For advertisers, that creates a new canvas that combines the intimacy of the phone screen with the halo of Disney IP.
This is also an unmistakable bid to reposition Disney+ as more than a lean-back, long-form destination. A vertical feed lets Disney surface more frequent touchpoints with subscribers between tentpole releases, while its ad sales team can offer placements that feel native to mobile-first behavior rather than ported over from traditional TV. The company is already exploring how to extend vertical formats across categories and content types to create more personalized experiences, suggesting a roadmap that could eventually include vertical executions tied to everything from kids’ shows to blockbuster franchises.
Behind the scenes, Disney is just as focused on how to prove those impressions are worth paying for. At the same CES showcase, the company introduced the Disney Advertising Brand Impact Metric, a new cross-channel measurement framework that blends first-party data with multiple third-party providers into a single, standardized score. Where legacy TV metrics have leaned on reach and frequency, this new model is explicitly built to capture the “halo effect” of brand advertising across Disney’s ecosystem.
The metric aggregates several familiar levers — attention, brand health and search activity among them — to quantify how exposure to Disney inventory moves both perception and performance outcomes. Disney says it is drawing on established measurement partners such as Affinity Solutions, CINT, EDO, Innovid and VideoAmp, integrating their outputs with its own first-party signals. The result is positioned as a single, advertiser-facing number that connects upper-funnel branding with lower-funnel behavior, giving marketers a clearer line of sight from a Disney placement to business impact.
Dana McGraw, senior vice president of data and measurement science at Disney Advertising, framed the initiative as an attempt to “connect all pieces of the measurement puzzle in a single metric,” arguing that when brands can tie exposure directly to results, they gain clarity not only on what worked but why. That ambition is particularly resonant at CES, where buyers are inundated with competing claims about attention, attribution and ROI. Disney’s bet is that simplifying the complexity into one integrated metric will make its inventory easier to justify in boardrooms.
Both moves – the vertical video push and the Brand Impact Metric – sit inside a broader AI-driven overhaul of Disney’s ad stack. The company is rolling out an AI-powered video generation tool that can assemble connected TV-ready spots from advertisers’ existing assets and brand guidelines, dynamically adapting creative by audience, context and placement. It is also deploying an AI planning system designed to make campaigns “more intentional, connected, and outcome focused,” automating setup so teams can spend more time on strategy.
Those tools are wired into Disney Compass, the company’s data platform, which now adds a Brand Portal view to surface performance across campaigns and services like Disney+, Hulu and ESPN. The portal pulls in data from measurement partners and layers on AI-generated summaries and a conversational assistant so marketers can query results in plain language. In effect, the Brand Impact Metric becomes both a KPI and a navigational anchor inside Compass, letting advertisers see how a vertical video buy on Disney+ interacts with broader investment across the portfolio.
For out-of-home and omnichannel planners, the implications are twofold. First, Disney is importing the mobile feed logic that dominates social media into a premium streaming environment, creating new inventory that behaves more like a personalized, vertical DOOH screen than a traditional TV spot. Second, by standardizing brand impact across formats and platforms, it is edging closer to a world where a campaign’s streaming, social and even physical touchpoints can be evaluated against a common, outcome-oriented yardstick.
Rita Ferro, Disney’s president of global advertising, has said AI will transform how TV is “planned, measured, and optimized” in 2026. The CES announcements put practical weight behind that vision. As Disney+ pivots into vertical video and Disney Advertising leans into unified measurement, the company is signaling that for premium streaming, the future isn’t just about more inventory. It is about formats that mirror how people actually watch – and metrics that can finally keep up.