As Rita Ferro, Disney president of global advertising, prepared to take the stage at the company’s recent upfront presentation, she had actor Paul Anthony Kelly on her mind.

Kelly recently portrayed John F. Kennedy Jr. in the limited FX TV series “Love Story,” and met Ferro at an earlier event. After a fangirl moment that included an iPhone snapshot, Ferro requested that Kelly introduce her at the annual pitch to advertisers.

“That’s the Disney difference: trust, innovation and unrivaled fandom. Not just with the stories they tell, but how they operate as a company,” Kelly said on stage earlier this month. “And all of this is in large part due to Rita Ferro.”

“She claims to be my biggest fan, but honestly I think I’m hers,” Kelly said.

Ferro is a 29-year veteran at Disney and has risen through various roles to the top of its advertising business. That places her at the center of a media industry rediscovering the importance of advertising, as traditional TV, streaming, digital and social platforms all jockey for viewers and ad dollars.

While Disney and other media companies held shows in mid-May to dazzle advertisers, the negotiations to lock in commitments are currently underway.

Ferro said in interviews with CNBC that she thinks fandom — from sports to entertainment franchises — is key to driving the Disney portfolio and what unites the company’s divisions under newly installed CEO Josh D’Amaro.

“When you think of ‘One Disney,’” Ferro said, referring to the strategy being undertaken by D’Amaro, “and all of the opportunities to tie in brand partnerships with our movie studio partners, [and] the corporate alliance pieces that can tie into park activations, it’s a far more interesting and dynamic opportunity than just a traditional media sales role.”

Ferro said prior to the company’s upfront presentation earlier this month, she had hardly spent an uninterrupted week at home this year. Her schedule has included the CES trade show in Las Vegas, the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C. That’s in addition to visiting various Disney offices to see her global team and often attending sporting events with ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro.

“One of the things that I admire most about her is the fact that she is in the field. You get to a certain level in sales and a lot of folks decide they’re going to focus on managing the team,” said Pitaro, one of three Disney leaders who Ferro reports to. “Rita does a fantastic job managing the team, but that is only a small part of what she considers her role to be.”

Colleagues of Ferro’s, both internally at Disney and more broadly across the industry, noted in interviews that her path to the top of a media giant’s ad business has been non-traditional. At the same time — perhaps serendipitously — her various roles over the years align with some of the main areas of growth now central to the media industry.

Disney has not been immune to recent industry turmoil, undergoing consolidations, reorganizations and leadership changes.

In March D’Amaro took over as CEO following Bob Iger’s second stint at the helm of the company — that most recent tenure lasting less than four years and designed to fortify Disney’s position in streaming, return the movie studio to its prior dominance and further propel its theme parks and experiences.

On his first day as CEO, D’Amaro said his goal was to focus the company on “coming together as one Disney to deliver a more connected, personalized and immersive experience to our consumers.”

Earlier this month during the company’s quarterly earnings call, CFO Hugh Johnston added it’s “about how we create, distribute, engage, and monetize our stories and brands across the company in a way that increases the lifetime value of our consumers and drives compounding returns for our bottom line – and thus for our shareholders.”

Monetizing stories is where Ferro comes in.

Her mandate spans entertainment TV networks — with marquee events like the Oscars and Grammys —streaming platforms Disney+ and Hulu and Disney’s sports portfolio, mainly comprised of ESPN’s linear and streaming options.

“Our portfolio is large, but it’s easy to navigate for our advertisers because of the way Rita has structured it. I’ll call it one-stop shopping for everything that they need,” said Debra OConnell, chairman of Disney Entertainment Television and another of Ferro’s bosses alongside Pitaro and Disney Entertainment Chairman Alan Bergman.

“She’s always been a leader, and asks, ‘How can I bring opportunities to clients that feel not only different, but also amplifying the engagement that a client could have with our audience?” said OConnell in an interview.

Media companies have leaned into established intellectual property in the face of widespread industry challenges including the decline of traditional cable TV subscribers; the push to make streaming profitable in a highly competitive landscape; and the slow recovery of the theatrical industry after the Covid pandemic — all while fighting to regain consumers’ attention that has shifted to social media platforms like TikTok.

Amid the shift to streaming, advertising’s role has only gained importance.

Wall Street once rewarded media companies for streaming subscriber growth, but as those numbers have plateaued for most companies, the addition of ad-supported options has been a new measure of success.

Although Hulu — which Disney acquired in pieces and took full control of in 2025 — was the first streamer to get in the advertising game, the company’s flagship service, Disney+, launched in 2019, added a cheaper, ad tier in late 2022.

During Disney’s most recent quarterly report in early May, the company’s entertainment segment reported that streaming revenue offset declines in both linear affiliate fees and advertising.

Disney+ saw double-digit ad revenue growth compared to the same period last year.

The NFL is in the midst of an 11-year, $111 billion media rights deal, while the NBA is in the first season of its 11-year, $77 billion deal. Higher rights fees means a need to capture return on investment. At Disney, that means leveraging “the power of live [events] and sports, and the strength of ESPN’s upcoming slate,” Pitaro said in an interview.

“[Ferro] gets and understands that,” he said. “That also comes with responsibility, right? Sports rights are expensive and so they have to be monetized, not just through affiliate fees but through ad sales and sponsorships. And she’s always delivering for us.”

This year ESPN will air the Super Bowl for the first time ever, and the game will return to Disney’s broadcast network ABC after 20 years. Super Bowl ads, which garner record money each year, are reportedly expected to sell for $10 million per 30-second spot.

Disney’s bet on sports and streaming amplified last August when the company launched the ESPN direct-to-consumer streaming app, which features all of the content from its TV network as well as exclusive programming.

“To me, live sports is just massively, massively valuable to to us,” said CFO Johnston at a recent investor conference. “More importantly, it’s massively valuable to advertisers because they want these big aggregated audiences and they value that tremendously.”

Emerging as a key differentiator in global advertising, and on display during this year’s upfront presentations, is technology.

“We’ve really redone our ad tech stack in a way that allows us to target for advertisers much, much more effectively,” Johnston said at an early March investor conference.

For Disney, that’s included the buildout of tools and offerings to unite streaming and linear TV for ad buyers; expanding measurement partnerships; creating Disney’s Audience Graph, essentially its own in-house first-party data about viewership; and in 2025 unveiling its ad-supported monthly active user methodology.

“That was very clear to me, that if we were to compete we needed to control our destiny,” rather than rely on a third-party platform, Ferro said.

These additions have debuted as part of Disney’s Tech and Data showcase at CES, which began in 2021, and serves as the unofficial kickoff to the upfront. Many ad tech and data firms offer these services to allow for better targeting as advertisers are demanding increasingly accurate audience measurement.

“She’s had the clarity of thought to say, ‘We need to be a tech-driven, data-driven organization with platforms that can compete at the level of Google and Meta,’” said Kevin Krim, CEO of ad data firm EDO. “Disney was early in investing in that stuff and aggressive in a way I think others sort of hesitated and then later went all in.”

Much of Disney’s in-house tech has been integral as advertisers look for specifics to target viewers and measures outcomes.

Josh Mattison, executive vice president of digital revenue pricing, planning and operations at Disney, who reports to Ferro, said in an interview that Ferro made a point to learn the ins and outs of the digital tools at Disney’s disposal.

“She understood the importance of having your own ad tech stack in order to scale globally and respond to the market’s expectations,” Mattison said. “If you look at one dimension of how Rita leads, it’s through the lens of not just embracing technology, but really driving technology, both within Disney, but also taking a position in the industry of how important it is for customers and how important it is for our business.”