Someone just got bounced out of Mickey’s clubhouse. 

Disney’s epic board seat battle with activist investor Nelson Peltz ended Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in a fashion that a film studio exec may note as anticlimactic: Peltz lost in a landslide, and, with the full backing of an all-allied board, CEO Bob Iger continues his reign. But for how much longer?

Close Proximity

Perhaps a proxy fight was exactly the kind of push Iger needed to make changes inside the House of Mouse. In the past few months, Iger has shuffled the c-suite deck in Disney’s film division, bundled Hulu into Disney+, and invested $1.5 billion into Fortnite-maker Epic Games. “If Disney was criticized before as lagging the industry, not being innovative enough, they are certainly now trying to be as innovative as they can be,” Jamie Lumley, sector analyst at Third Bridge, told The Daily Upside.

Still, Disney’s lack of succession planning for Iger’s supposed, eventual, departure — penciled in for 2026 — may have been Peltz’s best argument for disruption. In fact, ahead of Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting and board vote, influential proxy-advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services last week recommended investors vote to give Peltz a board seat for this very reason. They argued an outside voice may be necessary to ensure a smooth CEO transition. Shareholders ultimately balked at the advice, voting overwhelmingly to back Iger and Disney’s proposed slate of board members, sources told The Los Angeles Times. But they still need to figure out who’s going to fill Iger’s shoes:

• Among the most-mentioned sorcerer’s apprentices: Dana Walden, Disney’s well-liked TV executive who came from the 21st Century Fox acquisition; Alan Bergman, who has overseen the film division; parks head Josh D’Amaro; ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro.
• Disney’s massive scope has always created tension in the CEO job search. On the one hand, parks, experiences, and sports generate much of Disney’s profits, giving D’Amaro and Pitaro an edge; on the other hand, creating popular entertainment content drives interest in parks and experiences, and Walden and Bergman are well-connected with Hollywood creators – a skill Iger’s previous successor, the quickly-ousted Bob Chapek, lacked.

“Succession planning is definitely huge,” Lumley said. “And I think that one of the notable things not in the meeting today was any real discussion about where that process is.”

The Bottom Line: Underlying everything is Disney’s still-shaky transition to streaming. The company on Wednesday reiterated its goal of achieving profitability in streaming by the end of this year, but that’s easier said than done. “[Streaming] is what’s been eating into the margin of the business over the last four years. And we’ve heard some skepticism about Disney’s ability to deliver on these metrics, particularly the longer term operating margin targets they’re setting of double digits,” Lumley said, noting the decade-long march it took Netflix to achieve such scale. Where’s one of those wishing stars when you need one?

These days every kind of company needs an advertising division, why would banks be any different?

Chase Bank announced Wednesday that it’s launching a new “digital media business” called Chase Media Solutions. The advertising unit will show ads to the millions of people who log in to Chase’s website and app, with ad targeting based on — you guessed it — transaction data. Because really who knows you better: your long-since-ghosted social media profiles, or your bank?

ABCD — Always Be Collecting Data

We got used to thinking of targeted advertising as something that belonged to the Facebooks of the world, social media giants who could follow you round the web (although in reality, it’s the data brokers who really track your digital footprint). What ends up getting cobbled together is third-party data from here, there, and everywhere to build what data brokers sell as a holistic and accurate depiction of you as a consumer, which is then filtered into big buckets of other, similar consumers.

However, shifts in exactly how closely people can be followed round the web have eroded the value of that form of targeted advertising, and ad tech companies have emphasized quality over sheer, unending quantity. Chase picked an unusually sunny spell in the ad market’s outlook to announce the new venture, and what it’s spun up is meant to be a more forensic version of targeted advertising, as it will rely on the bank’s first-party data about exactly what you spend money on:

• In Chase’s press release announcing the new advertising business, it gave the example that brands could target “new, lapsed or loyal customers” based on their purchase history.
• Chase will then only charge ad buyers a fee if and when a customer actually makes a purchase using an offer or a deal. Rich Muhlstock, head of offers and e-commerce at Chase, told The Wall Street Journal the tactic will help Chase prove its worth to marketers.

What’s Old Is New: Your Chase app isn’t the only corner of the internet succumbing to the ever-expanding reach of online advertising this week. Perplexity AI, a generative AI search engine company that dreams of being a Google-killer, announced on Monday that it will sell ads. Perplexity prompts users to follow up on the questions they type into the search bar with additional questions — and that’s when it plans to introduce sponsored content, company chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko told Adweek. So the further down the AI rabbit hole you go, the more it tries to sell you stuff. 

Delivering food through an app is starting to feel a little bit like a regular job.

Starting this summer, DoorDash will contribute to savings accounts for its delivery couriers in Pennsylvania for a limited time, and the funds can go toward retirement or paying off health insurance premiums. 

Your Order Has Arrived

Services in the gig economy like DoorDash, Uber, and Instacart wouldn’t be where they are today without massive fleets of independent contractors — workers who are not considered employees and who don’t get benefits like health insurance, 401k contributions, and sick or vacation days. 

But pressure is mounting from workers groups and lawmakers for gig services to provide their contractors with better pay and the means to, you know, actually make a living in this high-interest-rate, high-inflation environment. Late last year, New York City made it so that delivery workers are paid at least $17.96 per hour.

DoorDash — which claims most of its couriers spend less than four hours a week making deliveries and already have other sources of income that provide benefits — is testing the waters in the Keystone State to see if giving some benefits to workers across all markets is even feasible: 

• From April through September, DoorDash couriers in the state who earn at least $1,000 in the second quarter of the year (excluding tips) will be eligible for a savings account managed by Stride.
• Starting in July, the company will start making monthly contributions to the accounts equal to 4% of couriers’ pre-tip earnings; couriers can add personal funds to the account as well. 

Cost of Doing Business: By solely looking at the market caps of gig economy businesses — Upwork ($1.6 billion), DoorDash ($56 billion), Uber ($163 billion) — you’d be forgiven for thinking these are some of the best-performing companies out there. In reality, many lose money each year. Uber ended the year in the black for the first time ever in 2023, posting a $1.1 billion profit compared to its $1.8 billion loss in 2022. 

Meanwhile, DoorDash reported a net loss of $558 million — a 59% improvement from 2022, but still a loss. Now factor in the more than 7 million Dashers who earned some $15 billion last year, and you can see why DoorDash and the like have been fighting tooth and nail to make sure those independent contractors don’t become salaried employees.