Marcus Johnson (00:00):

Commerce Media has grown up and so has the complexity. EMARKETER's Commerce Media Trends 2026 Summit get clear guidance on in-store retail media, offsite activation and measurement beyond platform metrics. Join EMARKETER analysts live March 20th at 11:30 AM Eastern and get straight answers on what actually drives results. Hey gang, it's Monday, January 26th. Ross, Max, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, EMARKETER Video Podcast. I'm Marcus and joining me for today's conversation we have two folks, our Senior Digital Advertising and Media Analyst living out in Westchester and that's in New York. It's Ross Benes.

Ross Benes (00:47):

Hey, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (00:48):

Hey, fella. I'm also joined by Principal Social Media Analyst living down in Philly. It's Max Willens.

Max Willens (00:54):

Yo.

Marcus Johnson (00:55):

Hey, fella. Today's fact. All right, gents. I know you're sports fans, so I have a sports one for you. I tried to tailor my facts of the day/find wherever I can because it normally takes three hours and then I'm like, "I should probably be doing my real job." The Green Bay Packers football team season ticket waiting list is one of the largest in professional sports. So if you want a season ticket, you're probably going to have to wait the longest for this one, between 100 to 200,000 names on the list. And given that about 99% of Packers season ticket holders renew, it's estimated that the wait time from when you place your name on the list to getting a general stadium season ticket is between 30 to 50 years. So people place their kids on when they're born, apparently, in the hopes that they will one day be eligible for a season ticket.

Max Willens (01:52):

I thought about doing that with my eldest child for Giant's season tickets, but they were so trash at the time that I thought I'm not doing this.

Marcus Johnson (02:01):

And you have to wait 12 years, 50, probably still.

Ross Benes (02:04):

And with the Giants, couldn't you just get in tomorrow? Does anyone want to watch that?

Max Willens (02:09):

I mean, that's the thing-

Ross Benes (02:10):

They'll pay you.

Max Willens (02:10):

... I might as well just buy them on StubHub for a quarter of the price.

Marcus Johnson (02:17):

Packer's also the only non-private ownership. They're a nonprofit co-ownership deal, which is pretty cool. I was also looking up how they got their name. So the Green Bay Packers, they got their name in 1919, the team found a Curly Lambeau, which the stadium is named after Lambeau Field, worked for the Indian Packing Company, which a meat packing business in Green Bay. The company gave Lambeau 500 bucks for uniforms on the condition that the team be named after the company. And as a result, the team became known as the Packers, a nod to the city's meat packing industry. So I thought that was fascinating.

Max Willens (03:00):

Love that.

Marcus Johnson (03:02):

Anyway, today's real topic. The Disney OpenAI deal, disaster waiting to happen, or the future of storytelling. All right, let's set the table. The deal between OpenAI and Disney certainly turned some heads. Headlines such as Deadlines, Disney's OpenAI Deal, Soulless Exploitation or Necessary Innovation, from Jake Kantor. Or Shiona McCallum at the BBC writing, Creative Industries Incredibly Worried About OpenAI Disney Deal. They sum up this apprehensive sentiment pretty well, quite nicely, I think. The news, what are we talking about? Well, Andrew Limbong of NPR writes that in December, the Walt Disney Company reached a licensing agreement with OpenAI bringing Disney characters and images to Sora, the AI company's short form video generator that lets users create videos of up to 20 seconds through short text prompts. The three-year licensing agreement lets folks create and share videos using over 200 animated characters from Disney, perhaps Encanto, Marvel, folks like Deadpool, and Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, maybe. Mickey Mouse and Mini, of course, were included. As part of the deal, Disney will invest $1 billion into OpenAI and become a major customer, quote-unquote, of the company. So Ross, I'll start with you. Why did Disney do this deal?

Ross Benes (04:21):

It seems like a way to generate cheap content. So if people are using AI and making stuff themselves to entertain themselves and they feel like they're willing to pay Disney just to have access to that, you're entertaining people with less of a budget than you would if you have to spend on a bunch of blockbusters to keep them subscribed.

Marcus Johnson (04:44):

Yeah. Yeah. The user-generated concept piece of this is really interesting. Mr. Blake Montgomery of the British newspaper, The Guardian, was saying that they're reportedly saying that some fan made videos will be displayed on Disney+ streaming service, a move seemingly designed to compete with TikToks and YouTube shorts, infinite feeds, which themselves often include clips of popular TV shows and movies. Disney planned to include vertical video feed inside Disney+ as well in the next year.

Ross Benes (05:10):

It's pretty interesting though, because Disney historically has been very litigious on people using their intellectual property, even if it's fan-made videos that are made in tribute of Disney. And in the '90s, Disney lobbied to have copyright changed in the favor of large corporations to be able to hold onto a character's likeness exclusively for a longer window than they previously had. And now they're saying, "Do whatever you want with Darth Vader." It's just interesting.

Max Willens (05:43):

They've come a long way from suing daycares for painting Disney characters as part of murals inside of their businesses. Yeah, I mean, I think that Ross's point about why Disney did it is pretty on point. A, it's hard to turn down a billion dollars and B, Disney understands that they're fighting a battle in the attention economy. And I think it's hard to argue that they're winning in that battle. I mean, so their box office revenue in 2025, was barely half of what they generated eight years ago. The Disney+ audience is growing, but it's growing at a mature clip now. And I feel like building something that allows them to stay at the heart of this kind of emergent form of content consumption and entertainment makes a lot of sense.

(06:37):

I think it's not a perfect parallel, but I think a lot about this in contrast with the way that Viacom, which was this incredibly culturally important media conglomerate at the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st, they went to war with YouTube and a war that lasted for years and years and years where they just basically would not allow clips of Viacom content to appear on YouTube. And I feel like if they had just been a little bit more permissive around that, they might've helped kindle a whole new form of cultural dialogue or discourse with their media and IP at the heart of it, and they completely missed that opportunity. And so I feel like on some level, Disney is hoping that something similar happens here, even though I have some doubts about whether that's actually going to happen.

Marcus Johnson (07:30):

Yeah. Yeah, one of the arguments here was that it gives Disney a seat at the table. They're hedging a little bit with this move. There are two former Disney animators. There are some interesting things to say. One of them who worked on Beauty and the Beast said, well, they said it degrades the experience for filmmakers. But we're saying Disney doesn't have a choice but to side with OpenAI. This is them trying to hold the reins and play damage control. If you can't beat them, join them. The other one was saying, "I think it's soulless. I don't think there's any artistic integrity behind it. Art, whether it's technically beautiful or a child's drawing is created with intent, with heart and with meaning." And they went on to tell this story about the value of storytelling and patience of storytelling as well.

(08:14):

This Snow Bear, one of them created this Oscar short-listed animated short, which took two years of hand drawing and depicted the journey of a lonely polar bear across a thawing wilderness. And they were saying the 10-minute film essentially captures their experience of losing their wife to cancer, seeing her almost literally melt away. And so a lot of these stories are people telling their stories through these characters. Both of them were concerned about this instant gratification piece as well, how AI could impact future generations of animators saying, "With Sora, we won't have the time or the patience to sit down and create works of art that help us deal with our feelings or communicate with others or create something big and beautiful like a movie because we'll be used to just getting it instantly." So it could change how we look at content creation.

Max Willens (08:59):

Well, I feel like maybe we'll get into this later in the show, but I feel like the current design of Sora drastically limits that worst case scenario or the possibility of that worst case scenario.

Marcus Johnson (09:14):

Tell me.

Max Willens (09:16):

I don't want to go behind the curtain.

Marcus Johnson (09:17):

No, please.

Max Willens (09:18):

So I just feel like fundamentally the power of storytelling and the value and power of the stories that everybody loves is that everybody gets to experience them and hold something collectively. And being able to generate an up to 20 second long clip of something unfamiliar, featuring familiar people, it has a real, real limited capability to do that. And so you think a lot about how powerful certain types of stories are, and also even just like small moments are with familiar characters, but it has to be something that everybody experiences in a uniform way together. So it's funny, preparing for this podcast made me think a lot about movies and plays, which I'm sure is the exact opposite of what OpenAI would want.

(10:20):

But it got me thinking a lot about this play, which is actually about to be developed into a movie called Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, which is about these people that are cast together unexpectedly around a campfire after civilization has collapsed. So they're in the woods outside some unnamed city and they're really having trouble keeping the conversation going because they don't know each other and everyone is all stressed out. And to break the awkward silence, someone goes, "Have any of you guys seen that episode of The Simpsons where Marge..." And then all of a sudden everybody lights up and they remember what the Simpsons was and it brings them all together in this profound way. And this technology will make precisely zero steps in the direction of creating something that's shared or held collectively. And so that's, I think, something that for people that are nervous about this, I think that's something that's worth keeping in mind.

Ross Benes (11:24):

Yeah. Did you bring up, did you use Mr. Burns as an example because the Simpsons is a Disney intellectual property now?

Max Willens (11:33):

It does work on that level, yes.

Marcus Johnson (11:36):

It's an appealing concept for consumers, assuming things go well because being able to put yourself or your kid at the heart of a Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, whatever movie is an attractive proposition. And Blake Montgomery of The Guardian was saying, "Disney wants you to AI generate yourself into your favorite Marvel movie." But Ross, there's all sorts of things that could go wrong here. I mean, yes, they're going to be 20 seconds and yes, OpenAI and Disney, they're saying that they're not going to let users generate illegal harmful or age inappropriate content. Easier said than done.

(12:10):

And they are only 20 seconds, although Mr. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney was saying to CNBC that it doesn't mean people are going to be able to make their own feature length Ratatouille fanfic videos or anything like that. You could easily see these videos getting longer and longer and eventually becoming maybe half an hour, an hour, whatever. But then also to what Max is saying, there won't be any of those collective experiences anymore because why would I want to watch a Marvel film with some random person I've never met before? I guess that's what actors are.

Ross Benes (12:38):

But we've been moving away from water cooler entertainment for a while. I mean, you still have the NFL and some other sports, but generally it's hard to find someone who's watching the shows you watch right now. Let alone you guys are using AI tools to create your own versions of that show. So I think we're just going to continue to move further away from water cooler television.

Max Willens (13:06):

But I don't know that we're going to progress completely in the direction of this ultra one-to-one personalized level of interactivity either because I just feel like the utility of it or the value of it is so, so limiting. I mean, I think a lot about... Because you're absolutely right, Ross. There are shows now that people like HBO look at The White Lotus as this unbelievably important show to them. And I think that the series finale of the most recent episode drew three and a half million people. And 20 years ago, if a show averaged 10 million viewers a week, it would get canceled immediately because it was just seen as too small. But whenever anybody, any novel thing takes root in culture, people, I feel like, tend to really pounce on it because there is this nagging hunger for something that we can all kind of coalesce around.

(14:08):

And so I think that this technology fundamentally moves further away from that, and that is reflected also too. And if you look at the sort of engagement and download numbers for things like Sora, they're trending in the wrong direction. And I think that kind of trajectory was probably one of the reasons why OpenAI sought to do this deal with Disney in the first place. That and avoiding being hit with a 10,000 pound cease and desist note from Disney's lawyers. Because it's also worth pointing out that Disney probably also did this to set a market. So they did this deal with OpenAI and they, within weeks of that, launched a gigantic lawsuit at Google for infringing on its copyrights and intellectual property, so that's another piece of this as well.

Marcus Johnson (14:58):

Yeah. To piggyback on that, I mean, Ross to Max's point, OpenAI definitely did this so they would not get sued by Disney at least for a while. Why else would OpenAI make this deal?

Ross Benes (15:11):

Well, I mean, Disney is one of the premier entertainment companies, and they have a richer history than about anyone in the business right now. So if you want to do one of these deals and set a precedent, Disney's a hell of a partner to start out with.

Marcus Johnson (15:32):

Yeah. Yeah. They're going to get Allison Morrow of CNN mentioning it. They're going to get to feed the AI video generator with some 200 Disney characters the users can manipulate in any way, shape or form. And they're going to get the much needed cash as well. That billion dollars is not a lot because they owe $1.4 trillion to various people over the next couple of years, but a billion dollars is nothing. And so they will get some much needed cash.

Ross Benes (15:56):

It almost seems video game-like, in a way that you just tell your kids, "Take the Nintendo and leave me alone for a few hours. Here's the Disney+. You can go do whatever you want with Mickey Mouse. Have fun creating your nonsense and being quiet in the other room." I can see it being useful for that.

Marcus Johnson (16:17):

But talking about creating nonsense, isn't that part of the concern here? I mean, Shiona McCallum, to return to her piece from the BBC for a second. She was saying, quote, "Sora's hyperrealistic videos have proven to be popular in the US, but there have been significant criticisms from those claiming it has also led to some people creating offensive deep fakes or videos of public figures who have passed away." Close quote. What do we make of this risk? Because I feel like a lot of people when they first heard of this deal were like, "Hang on, people are going to be able to do what with Disney characters?"

Ross Benes (16:48):

I mean, you ever log on Twitter lately, it's terrible. It's just like Grok, put all these people in bikinis, and they might even be minors. You know what I mean? There's no guardrails and very crazy images generated. So yeah, it's going to be tough reining that in.

Max Willens (17:05):

Also, for anybody worried about objectionable depictions of well-known children's characters, I'd like to make them aware of a little website called Deviant Art, which has been around for probably 20 years and is just teaming with this stuff. The thing that I keep coming back to and wondering is, what is the prospect that anything created through this partnership is going to pop or matter to anyone besides the child of the person who makes a Sora clip of their seven-year-old high-fiving Ironman or whatever it is. And I feel like on some level, the fact that this has been essentially sanctioned by these two companies might even have the opposite effect and just make these things boring. It's fun if someone sends you a link to a Tumblr post or a Nano Banana thing that's taking something and subverting it in a way.

(18:09):

I think a lot about when we were batting this piece around in prep. Do you guys ever hear of a movie called The Kid? So this was a movie that this artist named Dax Norman made a long time ago, which basically takes the footage of the movie Purple Rain, the Prince movie, and recuts it so that it looks... Instead of being a story about Prince and Morris Day squaring off to be the coolest band in Minneapolis. It's a movie about Prince murdering Apollonia and then spending the rest of the movie trying to get away with it. And it's a funny, cool idea, but I feel like a lot of the power of The Kid is the fact that it was basically this movie on the run for a long time because Prince's estate was like, "This is completely unacceptable. We're going to sue the..."

Ross Benes (18:57):

Prince was always super litigious.

Max Willens (18:59):

100%.

Ross Benes (18:59):

It's only after he died that his music is in commercials and stuff like that. He wouldn't even on Spotify when he was alive.

Max Willens (19:04):

No, exactly. And so for years and years, it was this, Dax Norman is going to appear at this one dingy art space in Bushwick for one night, show the movie once, and then escape undercover of darkness to avoid getting murdered by Prince's lawyers. And if instead we move into this era where anybody can do whatever they want with this stuff all the time, I feel like in some ways it might diminish interest in doing that stuff. But we're all brand new at the very beginning of this, so maybe I'll be completely wrong about this.

(19:41):

But I think that it'll be interesting also to see where this stuff gets traded and moved or passed around. I'm sure Disney would prefer that all of this just goes into some lazy river that lives inside the Disney+ app, that people just dumbly scroll through all the time, but maybe it breaks out and becomes really popular on YouTube or TikTok or something. Or maybe everyone just gets bored with the idea that you can take Mickey Mouse... Well, maybe not Mickey Mouse, he's public domain now. But take Buzz and Woody and have them do Krav Maga on each other or whatever.

Ross Benes (20:23):

You ever see Escape from Tomorrow? Or it's called Escape From... Yeah, Escape from Tomorrow.

Max Willens (20:29):

No, I don't think I know that.

Ross Benes (20:31):

That's another movie that was on the run. People filming illegally at Disneyland and they turn their Disneyland experience into a horror movie.

Max Willens (20:39):

Nice. See, this is what I love about this, is this conversation about ultra-personalized entertainment has instead turned into a way to discover new weird subversive works of art. I like this very much.

Marcus Johnson (20:52):

Trust you too. We talked about generating this content for the kids to be able to do this, that, and the other. It's interesting this for kids or not for kids question. Because nonprofit children's advocacy group, Fair Play, issued a statement saying, "The Disney OpenAI agreement betrays kids." Quote-unquote. OpenAI claims children are prohibited from using Sora, yet they are luring young kids to their platform using some of their favorite characters. I guess this is for parents perhaps to create videos for their kids. So we've talked a little bit about the disaster waiting to happen piece, but the other question is, or is this the future of personalized storytelling?

(21:31):

Disney and OpenAI's agreement hinting at this future in which viewers don't just choose what to watch, but generate it on demand as we've been talking. And Deni Ellis Béchard of Scientific American was noting this. Disney's chief, Bob Iger, saying in a recent earnings conference call that he intends for subscribers to create content within Disney+ itself. So you can imagine going into Disney+ and maybe using Powered by OpenAI or whatever, saying the type of film you want, the type of characters, and then letting it create you a video. Do we think that might be replicated by other platforms? Is this potentially the future of personalized storytelling?

Ross Benes (22:13):

What if that stuff still be very low quality compared to every single TV show and movie Disney's going to put out?

Marcus Johnson (22:20):

Most likely.

Ross Benes (22:21):

It's cool I could do something with Buzz Lightyear, Darth Vader or the Marvel characters, but that's just going to be really rudimentary to the $900 million blockbuster I could sit back and watch and be amazed by. I think there's a place for both, but I just don't see how it replaced that totally.

Max Willens (22:41):

It's funny, as we sit here wondering about the business or models or content models that I feel like this potentially impacts or changes, as we've been having this conversation, I feel like the conclusion I've now drawn is that this is just going to put cameo out of business. Instead of paying Lou Ferrigno 50 bucks to say happy birthday to your grandma, you can have all of the Avengers say happy birthday to your grandma and it will cost $0. And maybe that's the main thing that this imperils. I think though, at the risk of being too piffy, the answer to your question is no. I mean, again, to get back to what I was saying. The reason that storytelling has remained a durable thing that we as a species continue to do is because it's a way to bond people to one another.

(23:34):

And one-to-one's story remixing is structurally at odds with that. And so I just don't see it replacing anything. I mean, if you want to talk about a way to continue to entertain your grandparents when they're in the nursing homes of tomorrow, I could see a version of that taking root. But the idea that young people who are looking for meaning and looking for tribes and looking for communities to inject themselves into or become parts of, they're not going to want to just sit around fiddling with the stuff that they liked doing when they were eight and sharing it with one another. That seems non-credible on its face, but you guys can...

Ross Benes (24:20):

I could see a lot of guys on Reddit trying to break it and get it to do things it's not supposed to.

Max Willens (24:25):

Oh, yeah.

Ross Benes (24:25):

And then just having threads of the things that they've gotten it to do.

Max Willens (24:29):

Yes. And I will watch those threads. That sounds like fun. But I will chuckle at them, close Reddit, and then go back to watching a-

Ross Benes (24:39):

Professionally made.

Max Willens (24:40):

Yeah, a snooty highbrow thing made in Korea on movie instead because I'm old and snouty.

Marcus Johnson (24:49):

Well, we've seen with content, people want to be served the content. You had the chance to pick anything on Netflix. We talked about this, but people sit there scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, because they're not sure what to watch. And that's why Fast Services, apart from being free, are becoming quite popular because people can just turn them on and they're there. They replicate TV. Similar with Spotify and Apple Music. I could pick any song in the world, but paralyzed by choice. And so I ended up just putting on some kind of playlist or song radio or something like that. And so I don't know yeah, are people going to want to sit there and fiddle about with trying to design and direct and produce their own movie every time they want to watch one, just for 20 seconds worth of content, probably not.

(25:23):

You mentioned that cameo might go out of business because of this. One of the big questions here is what's going to happen with a lot of the people in the entertainment business. And also, how the characters are going to sound remains unclear. Because Disney said that this does not include any talent, image, likeness, or voices of human performers. And so they're not going to sound the way... So Woody won't sound like Tom Hanks because they've not asked Tom Hanks to use his voice. So they can use the characters, but not the people. There's a union representing workers in the creative industries saying there's real concern among its members, including writers, actors, visual effects artists, and other creatives over AI replacing jobs. It's noticed in the BBC article, Max.

Max Willens (26:06):

I'm so sorry.

Marcus Johnson (26:08):

What are you picturing?

Max Willens (26:10):

No, I'm just imagining people budding voice actors, giving voices, completely absurd voices. Someone who does a really good Donald Trump or Eric Cartman or something, sticking that voice behind a well-known character, that to me just seems like an endless source of amusement. I am sorry. I completely derailed you there.

Marcus Johnson (26:40):

No, you're fine. They're going to have to do something because they don't have the rights to the voices. So yeah, how the characters are going to sound still rather unclear. Gents, before we wrap this up, any other big questions that come to mind about this deal going forward?

Max Willens (26:54):

I'd be curious to see whether another studio or large IP holder blinks and does this. I mean, WBD obviously sits on a pretty rich library of stuff that could lend itself well to this. I'm skeptical myself, but everybody is right at the very beginning of this. And the terms of this arrangement between Disney and OpenAI, as I understand them, are favorable enough to the rights holders that it doesn't seem like that high risk, but I could also totally understand all of them just hanging back and instead trying to sue the pants off of OpenAI and all the other AI companies instead.

Marcus Johnson (27:41):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Will other players blink and do something similar? The three-year licensing deal, it's one year of exclusivity for OpenAI, and then Disney can shop its IP around to other AI companies. We'll see. But thank you so much, gents, for the conversation. It's all we've got time for today. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to Ross.

Ross Benes (28:01):

Thanks, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (28:02):

And to Max.

Max Willens (28:03):

Always a pleasure, Marcus. Thank you.

Marcus Johnson (28:05):

Yes, indeed. And to the whole production crew, we've got Danny and Lance helping us out today. Where's John? He's not been on one of these in ages, lazy. And to everyone for listening, thank you so much to you guys as well. Thanks for listening to Behind the Numbers, EMARKETER Video Podcast. Make sure you subscribe and follow and leave a rating and review if you have time. We're back tomorrow as I guest host the Banking and Payment show, talking all about banking and payments trends for 2026.