It literally depends on who it is benefitting. If I run a small clothing company ad I want to print Mickey Mouse tshirts becasue it will make me money, I need to pay license fees to Disney to use their IP.

On the other hand if I am the biggest clothing manufacturer in the world and my tshirts are worn organically by loads of influencers, Disney might contact me and ask me to make a tshirt of their character so that they are getting exposure to a certain demographic on a certain platform. This way round it is advertising and so it benefits disney, and so instead of me paying to license their characters, they pay me to advertise them.

You pay for advertisement and product placement.

Not the other way around.

We live in an atenttion economy, if Disney content is not in your face on all mediums (which now include AI slop), they lose money.