Mediaocean today announced the launch of Prisma Direct, a new workflow product connecting advertising buyers and sellers to activate direct transactions across streaming, video, and connected television. Disney will be the first media company to integrate with the platform, doing so through an API connection built on the same underlying technology that powers Disney Campaign Manager. The product is slated to go live in Q3 2026.

The announcement, dated March 31, 2026, marks one of the more significant structural changes in how premium video inventory is transacted at scale. Prisma Direct sits inside Mediaocean's Prisma platform - already used by more than 100,000 people globally as a system of record for media management and finance - and is designed to automate ordering, trafficking, campaign analytics, billing, and reconciliation in a single connected workflow.

For context, Mediaocean's own survey of 320 marketing professionals published in January 2026 found that 56% of marketers identified fragmentation across platforms and publishers as their largest area of concern. Connected TV and digital video tied at 63% as the channel categories where respondents planned to increase spending in the first half of 2026. The launch of Prisma Direct speaks directly to both findings.

What the product actually does

According to the announcement, Prisma Direct automates direct-to-publisher integrations that have traditionally been carried out through a collection of manual steps: spreadsheets, PDFs, rekeyed insertion orders, offline trafficking sheets, and disconnected financial reconciliation processes. These workflows exist because most premium TV and streaming video orders are transacted as direct deals, not programmatic ones. Prisma Direct targets that specific gap.

The system creates a set of trusted endpoints connecting buyers and sellers, removing the need to relay information across separate systems. Ordering flows directly into trafficking, which connects to campaign analytics, which then feeds into billing and reconciliation - all within the same workflow. According to Drew Kane, Chief Product Officer at Prisma, "The majority of premium TV and streaming video orders are direct, and we're committed to providing the most direct, automated, and low-cost integrations at enterprise scale."

The Disney integration makes that claim concrete. Through a new API connection using the same technology that underlies Disney Campaign Manager, agencies and brands will be able to automate buying, execution, and financial workflows across Disney's full portfolio. That portfolio is substantial. Disney Advertising covers advertising sales across ABC, ABC News, Disney+, Disney Channels Worldwide, ESPN Networks, ESPN+, Freeform, Fubo, FX, National Geographic, Hulu, and eight ABC-owned local television stations.

According to Jamie Power, SVP of Addressable Sales at Disney Advertising, "We value openness and collaboration across the ecosystem, and innovations like Prisma Direct align perfectly with our goal of removing friction and enabling greater flexibility for our clients." Importantly, the integration also covers sponsorships and high-impact placements aligned with Disney intellectual property - all, according to the announcement, accessible through automation.

Why direct buying still carries so much manual overhead

The persistence of manual processes in direct TV and streaming buying is not an accident. It reflects the structural difference between programmatic markets, where real-time bidding infrastructure handles execution, and direct deals, where contracts are negotiated individually and then operationalised through a chain of disparate tools.

PPC Land has tracked how the industry has moved in multiple directions to address this. In January 2026, Basis and Mediaocean announced an integration connecting Basis's unified advertising platform with Prisma, Innovid, and Mediaocean's Protected platform, creating infrastructure for agencies to manage media operations from planning through financial reconciliation in a more connected way. That deal focused on automating the full campaign lifecycle. Prisma Direct narrows its scope specifically to direct publisher transactions - a more surgical intervention in a historically resistant part of the workflow.

In December 2024, Microsoft Advertising integrated with Prisma for automated order insertion, reducing approval times to minutes and eliminating the requirement for media buyers to manage separate logins or PDF documents. That integration addressed search buying friction. Prisma Direct extends a similar logic to premium video.

In March 2024, Mediaocean and Magnite announced a partnership bringing automation to CTV and online video through the ClearLine solution. That collaboration gave Prisma users direct access to premium video inventory from publishers reaching more than 90% of ad-supported CTV viewers in the United States. Prisma Direct appears to extend that infrastructure layer further, building a more systematic automation framework for direct publisher connections rather than relying exclusively on supply-side intermediaries.

Disney's advertising technology trajectory

Disney's willingness to be the first integration partner for Prisma Direct fits a pattern of technology investments the company has made in its advertising infrastructure over the past two years. In April 2025, Disney expanded biddable ad technology across its streaming platforms, enabling programmatic integration for live content on Hulu and Disney+, including ESPN and ABC News content. That was positioned as a significant advancement enabling automated workflows for buyers accessing live streaming inventory.

In June 2025, Disney's Real-Time Ad Exchange connected directly with Amazon DSP, providing advertisers access to Disney+ and Hulu inventory with Amazon commerce data layered in. That integration launched in Q3 2025 for all Amazon DSP advertisers.

Disney renewed its two-year partnership with Magnite in October 2024, expanding programmatic capabilities across more than 30 demand-side platforms and extending into six Latin American markets, covering Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina. Magnite handles billions of programmatic transactions monthly for Disney's portfolio.

The Prisma Direct integration complements these programmatic partnerships rather than replacing them. Power's quote in the announcement makes this explicit: Disney's goal is to make it easier for advertisers to buy "through direct access, programmatic platforms, or any combination in between." What Prisma Direct provides is specifically automation for the direct channel - the one that most previous integrations left largely untouched.

Technical and financial implications

According to the announcement, Prisma Direct is designed to deliver five operational outcomes: lower operational costs for agencies and brands; reduced tech fees and fewer intermediaries; higher net revenue and less leakage for publishers; improved accuracy in financial operations and billing; and greater transparency with real-time insights.

Each of these has a distinct technical dimension. Reduced intermediaries is the most structurally significant. Current direct buying workflows often pass through multiple systems - order management tools, trafficking platforms, financial reconciliation systems - that are not natively connected. Each handoff introduces delay, potential for data discrepancy, and cost. A single connected workflow, with trusted endpoints on both the buy side and sell side, removes those handoffs by design.

For publishers, revenue leakage in direct campaigns typically occurs at reconciliation - when booked spend does not match delivered impressions, and discrepancies are resolved, often manually and often in favour of the buyer. A more automated reconciliation process, with billing tied directly to campaign analytics, closes that gap. For agencies, the reduction in manual steps translates to fewer hours spent on operational tasks and, according to the announcement's framing, lower overall execution costs.

Mediaocean describes Prisma as an AI-driven media buying, optimization, and execution platform. The company reports over $200 billion in annualised ad spend running through its software products. Prisma's ranking as the number one enterprise cross-channel software provider by G2 reflects its adoption among major holding company agencies and large in-house marketing operations. Prisma Direct adds a new capability layer to that installed base without requiring a separate tool or platform.

Broader industry context

The launch arrives as CTV advertising continues to scale at speed. IAB Tech Lab published standards for six CTV ad formats in December 2025, with public comment open through January 31, 2026, as part of a wider effort to bring technical consistency to programmatic connected television buying. Streaming viewership reached a historic milestone in 2025 when Nielsen data showed streaming accounting for 44.8% of TV viewing - surpassing the combined share of broadcast (20.1%) and cable (24.1%) for the first time.

Against that backdrop, Proximic by Comscore's survey of more than 200 advertising decision-makers, conducted between November 4 and November 25, 2025, found that more than 51% of respondents expect more than 60% of their CTV budgets to be transacted programmatically in 2026. Yet direct deals remain a substantial and persistent portion of the overall market. Prisma Direct addresses precisely this segment.

Comcast Advertising introduced biddable linear TV inventory through programmatic private marketplaces in October 2025, powered by FreeWheel's Buyer Cloud technology. That move extended automated buying into traditional broadcast environments. Prisma Direct works in the opposite direction - applying automation logic to direct premium video and streaming transactions rather than converting them to programmatic bidding. The two approaches are complementary.

Google Ad Manager introduced its Buyer Direct feature in November 2025, designed to merge traditional direct deal control with programmatic technology benefits, enabling reservation-style agreements with real-time reporting and consolidated billing. Prisma Direct occupies adjacent territory, but operates from the buy side and targets the workflow infrastructure connecting agencies to specific publishers - in this initial instance, Disney.

What comes next

The announcement states that Prisma Direct is "slated to go live in Q3" of 2026 - a detail worth noting, since it means the product is not yet available for use at the time of the announcement. The Q3 timeline gives agencies and brands several months to plan integrations and adapt workflows before the capability is live. Whether additional media companies join as integration partners beyond Disney, and at what pace, will determine how broadly the product reshapes direct buying practice.

Mediaocean also operates Innovid, the independent ad tech platform for creative delivery, measurement, and optimization, and Protected by Mediaocean, covering ad verification and brand safety. Prisma Direct sits within Prisma and connects to these adjacent platforms, positioning the broader Mediaocean stack as infrastructure spanning the full direct transaction lifecycle.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Mediaocean, through its Prisma platform, and Disney Advertising, with Drew Kane (Chief Product Officer, Prisma) and Jamie Power (SVP, Addressable Sales, Disney Advertising) cited in the announcement.

What: The launch of Prisma Direct, an integrated workflow product automating direct transactions - including ordering, trafficking, campaign analytics, billing, and reconciliation - between advertising buyers and premium video sellers. Disney is the first media company to integrate, via an API connection using the same technology as Disney Campaign Manager.

When: Announced March 31, 2026. Prisma Direct is slated to go live in Q3 2026.

Where: The product sits within Mediaocean's Prisma platform, used by more than 100,000 people globally. The Disney integration covers inventory across ABC, ABC News, Disney+, Disney Channels Worldwide, ESPN Networks, ESPN+, Freeform, Fubo, FX, National Geographic, Hulu, and eight ABC-owned local TV stations.

Why: Premium TV and streaming video orders are predominantly direct rather than programmatic, yet the workflows supporting those transactions remain heavily manual - involving spreadsheets, PDFs, rekeyed orders, and disconnected financial reconciliation. Prisma Direct aims to remove that operational overhead, lower costs for buyers, reduce revenue leakage for publishers, and bring greater transparency to direct campaign execution at scale.

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