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- Disney Bets $1B on AI Video Generation
Disney Bets $1B on AI Video Generation
Plus: OpenAI's fastest model yet and 9 new AI marketing tools worth exploring
Aleric Heck
December 14, 2025
In partnership with
What a week to wrap up. I've spent the last 24 hours unpacking some truly seismic shifts in our industry—and I couldn't wait to share them with you.
Here's the headline: We're officially watching legacy media giants pivot from fighting generative AI to betting billions on it. Disney just dropped $1 billion on OpenAI and announced plans to let ChatGPT users create videos featuring 200+ Disney characters. Meanwhile, OpenAI fired back at Google's Gemini 3 with GPT-5.2—their most capable model yet.
But what's really caught my attention is the acceleration of something I've been tracking for months: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is rapidly replacing traditional SEO as the visibility metric that matters. AI assistants are now cutting web clicks by over 30%, and brands that aren't optimizing for LLM visibility are becoming invisible.
📍 In Today's Newsletter:
Why Disney's $1B OpenAI bet signals a fundamental shift in how brands approach AI
GPT-5.2's capabilities and what they mean for your marketing workflows
The GEO tools you need to track your brand's AI visibility
9 new AI marketing tools worth exploring this weekend
A pro tip for getting ahead of conversational commerce
Let's dive in.
📈 Today's Top AI Marketing Story
Disney's $1 Billion Vote of Confidence in Generative AI
This is the story that made me stop scrolling. Disney announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI alongside a licensing deal that will allow ChatGPT users to generate videos featuring over 200 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar characters starting in 2026.
The strategic implications here are massive. Disney carefully excluded voice and actor likenesses to avoid union disputes—but they're going all-in on visual IP generation. They're even planning to stream user-generated Sora content on Disney+.
Why This Matters for Marketers:
This represents a fundamental pivot from litigation to monetization. When the most protective IP holder in entertainment history decides to embrace generative AI rather than fight it, the writing is on the wall. Every brand watching from the sidelines just got a clear signal: figure out your generative AI strategy now, or get left behind.
⚡ Quick Action Tip: Start thinking about how user-generated AI content could fit into your brand strategy. If Disney can find a way to monetize it while protecting their core IP, there's likely an opportunity for your brand too.
🚀 AI Marketing Quick Hits
OpenAI Launches GPT-5.2
OpenAI's response to Google's Gemini 3 dropped December 11th, and the specs are impressive:
400,000 token context window with 128,000 max output tokens
Knowledge cutoff: August 31, 2025 (finally caught up!)
11x faster output than expert professionals at 1% of the cost
Major improvements in spreadsheet creation, presentations, code generation, and multi-step project handling
Why This Matters: The benchmark testing shows GPT-5.2 outperforming industry professionals across 44 different occupations. For marketers, this means AI can now handle increasingly complex, multi-step projects with minimal hand-holding.
✅ Action Item: If you're a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, you should have access now. Test it on a complex marketing project—like building a full campaign brief with audience research, messaging, and creative direction—and compare the output to previous models.
Adobe Tools Now Live Inside ChatGPT
Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat are now integrated directly into the ChatGPT interface. This means you can move from ideation to execution without switching platforms.
Why This Matters: The creative workflow just got significantly shorter. Instead of prompting ChatGPT for creative direction, then opening separate Adobe tools, you can now execute within the conversation.
GEO Is Officially a Thing—And There Are Tools for It
The shift from SEO to Generative Engine Optimization is no longer theoretical. Several tools launched this week specifically to track brand visibility within AI responses:
GenRank (24,090 users and counting): Tracks brand mentions and rankings within ChatGPT responses
AI Search Tracker by Akii: Monitors brand visibility across AI assistants
SEO Geo Amplifier by AImpact: Agentic tool for GEO positioning
Why This Matters: Research shows AI assistants are reducing traditional web clicks by over 30%. If you're not showing up in AI responses, you're becoming invisible to a growing segment of searchers.
✅ Action Item: Run your brand through GenRank to see where you currently stand in AI visibility. The data might surprise you.
🔍 Featured AI Tool Spotlight
Digibate — "The AI Marketing Workspace"
This one's been on my radar, and the user feedback is compelling. Digibate (28,277+ users) positions itself as a unified interface that combines strategy, content creation, and team execution.
What Makes It Noteworthy:
The pitch is essentially "a high-performance marketing team without the overhead." Users are describing it as the first AI marketing tool that moves beyond suggestions into actual execution. You can go from strategic brief to campaign assets within a single workspace.
Potential Use Cases:
Agencies managing multiple client campaigns without scaling headcount
Small business owners who need enterprise-level marketing capabilities
Marketing teams looking to reduce production bottlenecks
What to Watch: The tool is still relatively new, so I'm curious to see how it handles complex, multi-channel campaigns. But the early reviews suggest this could be a category leader.
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🛠️ More AI Tools Worth Exploring
Content & Creative
NextDocs v1.3 — AI-Native Document Editor
Custom brand themes with AI theme generation
Pageless editor for modern document creation
Professional image filters built in
MediaPET.ai — Agentic Video Ad Creation
Creates 30-second cinematic ads from text prompts
Designed specifically for advertising workflows
Marketing Automation
Protaigé — Campaign Kit Generator
Moves from strategic brief to launch-ready assets in minutes
Early users report 90% reduction in production costs
LiftKit — AI Growth Agents
Positions itself as agency replacement at "near-zero cost"
Users are reporting they've moved away from traditional agency relationships entirely
Intelligence & Analytics
Averi AI — Brand Intelligence Platform
Described as "Palantir for brand intelligence and sales"
35,282+ users and growing
Alchemer Pulse — AI Feedback Analysis
Analyzes open-text feedback for sentiment, themes, and actionable insights
Designed for enterprise-level feedback processing
Specialized Solutions
Toktak — Product-to-Social Converter
Converts product links into social media content automatically
Global platform with multi-language support
Syndigo OpenAI Connect — GEO for Product Data
Publishes product data to generative AI platforms
Helps products surface in AI shopping recommendations
VizSense GeminiAI — Holographic Influencer Marketing
Creates AI avatars for influencer campaigns
Novel approach to scaling influencer content
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💡 Pro Tip of the Day
Prepare for Conversational Attribution
Here's something that's been keeping me up at night: our entire attribution model is built around clicks. But when buyers are completing their journey inside ChatGPT conversations, traditional click-based metrics become meaningless.
Here's How to Get Ahead:
Step 1: Start tracking where your brand appears in AI responses using tools like GenRank or Akii's AI Search Tracker
Step 2: Monitor ChatGPT referral traffic in your analytics—it's often bucketed under "direct" or "other" right now
Step 3: Consider building chat-native experiences using OpenAI's Apps SDK if you have developer resources
Step 4: Begin documenting "conversational touchpoints"—instances where users mention discovering you through AI assistants
🎯 Success Metric: Track the percentage of new customers who report discovering you through AI assistants in your onboarding surveys. This is your leading indicator of conversational commerce impact.
⚡ KeywordSearch.com Feature Spotlight
With all this talk about AI-powered marketing automation, here's something that connects directly to today's themes:
The biggest challenge with autonomous AI marketing tools? They're only as good as your audience targeting. You can have the most sophisticated AI content generator in the world, but if you're targeting the wrong people, you're just burning budget faster.
That's where KeywordSearch.com's AI Audience Builder fits in. While the tools we covered today focus on content creation and workflow automation, KeywordSearch focuses on the foundation: finding the right audiences for your Google and YouTube Ads.
What sets it apart:
AI-powered audience creation that surfaces targeting opportunities you'd never find manually
One-click sync to Google and YouTube Ads—no CSV exports, no manual uploads
Competitor ad intelligence showing what's actually working in your space
The offer: 5-day unlimited free trial. No restrictions, no credit card walls—just full access to see if it fits your workflow.
🔮 Looking Ahead
The next week should be interesting. With GPT-5.2 rolling out widely and Disney's deal making headlines, I expect we'll see more legacy brands announcing their generative AI strategies. The question isn't whether AI will transform marketing—it's whether you'll be ahead of the curve or playing catch-up.
Keep experimenting, keep learning, and don't be afraid to test these new tools. The marketers who thrive in 2026 will be the ones who started building their AI capabilities now.
Until next time,
Aleric & Greg KeywordSearch.com
P.S. Curious how AI can supercharge your ad targeting? Take KeywordSearch for a test drive with our unlimited 5-day free trial and see for yourself. Start here →
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