What if fan videos are everywhere, but you can’t bring them onto your own channels?
Even when customers voluntarily post product videos on TikTok and Instagram, brands are often limited to reacting from their official accounts. They can’t copy the videos without permission, and even with permission, they may not have decided where to feature them or what to measure.
What stands out in Disney and TikTok’s new partnership is not celebrity creators or the short-form feed itself. It is a structure that distributes content from creators who agree to participate across both TikTok and Disney+, while running it as a tiered relationship program.
If you read this case as “AI failed, so they went back to people,” you miss the important design. The earlier OpenAI deal and this TikTok partnership differ in who creates the content, but both share an effort to connect fan-made short-form video with Disney IP and selectively distribute it on Disney+.
This was not a case of $1 billion disappearing
Disney and OpenAI’s deal was announced not in 2024, but on December 11, 2025. The plan was to use more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars in fan-generated Sora videos over three years, and to selectively make some results available on Disney+. The likenesses and voices of performers such as actors were excluded from the license scope.
The $1 billion announced alongside it was not a license payment or a confirmed loss. It was a separate equity investment Disney intended to make in OpenAI, subject to closing conditions including final agreement negotiations and company and board approvals. Public information alone cannot establish whether the investment was actually completed or whether there was an accounting loss.
About three months after announcing the deal, OpenAI announced Sora’s shutdown, and its web and app services ended on April 26, 2026. Disney said it respected OpenAI’s decision to exit the video-generation business and shift its priorities.
AI and people: what changed is the production method
| Category | OpenAI deal | TikTok partnership |
|---|---|---|
| Content creation | Sora videos generated from fan prompts | Videos from opted-in human creators |
| IP use | More than 200 authorized characters | Authorized scenes and assets |
| Distribution | Plans to selectively make some videos available on Disney+ | Plans to publish on TikTok and Disney+ Verts |
| Relationship design | Centered on a fan-generation tool | A tiered creator ambassador program |
The TikTok partnership includes special rewards, increased visibility, access to exclusive events, and career development paths. However, how to apply, selection criteria, whether cash compensation will be paid, and specific licensing terms have not been disclosed.
Most importantly, Verts, Disney+’s vertical feed, had already launched in the U.S. mobile app on March 12, 2026, before the Sora shutdown announcement. Disney said at launch that it was exploring the addition of creator content in the future. Therefore, there is no basis for viewing the TikTok program as a substitute strategy hastily chosen because Sora shut down. A more accurate reading is that Disney’s existing distribution strategy for bringing fan content to Disney+ has added human creators’ consent and a relationship program.
46% is not Disney’s conversion rate
According to the partnership announcement, TikTok had an average of 6.5 million film- and TV-related posts per day in the previous year. This is internal TikTok data and does not count Disney fan videos alone.
In the Ipsos study cited alongside it, 46% of respondents said that after watching entertainment content on TikTok, they watched a film or TV show on a streaming service or TV. The survey ran from June 25 to July 10, 2025, among 7,000 people aged 18–49 across seven countries, sampled from people with experience engaging with entertainment content on social and video platforms.
Do not turn this number into “46% of fan-video viewers converted.” It is a self-reported survey, not performance specific to Disney content or an experiment comparing before and after the partnership’s introduction. Pilot targets should be set against your own content’s existing detail-page view rate, viewing-start rate, or purchase-start rate—not 46%.
Start the first pilot in an existing discovery surface, not with a new feed
You do not need to build a short-form feed inside your app first. Start by testing, with one title or product line, whether rights-cleared fan content increases follow-up actions on your existing owned surfaces.
- Set a one-sentence hypothesis and primary metric. Using the official announcement’s structure as a reference, connect “opted-in creator content → selective placement on an owned surface → viewing or purchase.” Fix the comparison period in advance, such as 14 days, and choose either detail-page click-through rate or purchase-start rate as the primary metric. The structure of Disney’s partnership is available in the official announcement.
- Classify fan content from the past 30–90 days. Log posts that mention the title or product name by topic, format, engagement, and rights-clearance status. Keep videos without consent only as candidates; do not copy them to owned channels.
- Document the permitted scope first. Put the logos, images, and clips you can use; prohibited elements; placement surfaces; publishing period; exclusion criteria; and creator benefits in one document. Record explicit consent for participation and reuse scope for each piece of content as well.
- Compare within the same existing discovery surface on the web or in the app. Place rights-cleared fan content and standard brand videos in equivalent surfaces, such as product listings or title-discovery areas, and link them to detail, viewing, or purchase pages. If timing or audience exposure differs substantially, factors beyond content format may change the results, so align the comparison period and exposure conditions as closely as possible.
- Decide using fixed formulas. Over 14 days, calculate detail-page click-through rate as detail-page visits÷content impressions and purchase-start rate as purchase starts÷content impressions, then compare them with standard brand videos on the same surface. A state where activity can be tracked from participation consent through follow-up action means the pilot is ready; when the rate preselected as the primary metric is higher than the baseline, treat that as support for the effectiveness hypothesis. If the sample is too small, increase the period or number of impressions and evaluate again using the same criteria.
Hypothesis: When rights-cleared content from 10 opted-in creators introducing new product A is shown in the existing product-discovery surface for 14 days, does the detail-page click-through rate (detail-page visits÷content impressions) rise above the baseline for standard brand videos on that same surface?
The takeaway is not that “people are better than AI.” Regardless of how content is made, the three connections are: organize the rights to use it, selectively distribute it on owned surfaces that already have traffic, and measure post-impression actions for each piece of content.
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