Nielsen’s Gracenote Gets Into Contextual Ad Game

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit said it is selling its metadata about the content of television shows and movies for use in targeting connected-TV advertising campaigns.

Gracenote said Cineverse, DirecTV Advertising, Philo, Tastemade and Xumo will begin using the program-level metadata to engage consumers.

The data will also be used by Peer39 to determine the contextual suitability and quality of content for advertisers and by Magnite, which will use the data to help programmatic CTV buyers.

Gracenote’s data had previously mainly been used by content owners and distribution platforms to help viewers discover content they want to watch, increasing the size of their audiences.

“For CTV advertising to reach its full potential, scale and transparency are critical,” Gracenote chief product officer Trent Wheeler said.

“Gracenote is uniquely positioned to become the taxonomy for the CTV marketplace providing program-level metadata for sellers and buyers to transact on,” Wheeler said. “The insight into content enabled by Gracenote Contextual Video Data will help publishers optimize their CTV inventory and advertisers reach target audiences at scale.”

For publishers, the use of Gracenote’s metadata could make their content more attractive to advertisers.

For example, if a sports documentary is only identified as a documentary, it might not be bought by advertisers looking to reach consumers interested in sports. Similarly, if a drama about fashion is only identified as a drama, it might not be bought by fashion advertisers.

“Magnite is pleased to be working with Gracenote to scale the use of standardized contextual categories to improve CTV advertising outcomes and as our collaboration continues, we’ll innovate together to facilitate the adoption, scale and distribution of Contextual Video Data,” Magnite senior VP of strategic partnerships Kristen Williams said. “In addition to experimenting with different packages based on contextual use cases, we are discussing additional features including more robust data controls for media owners. We look forward to working closely with Gracenote and our partners to increase collaboration through contextual insights.”

Advertisers can also use the metadata keywords to exclude programs containing certain themes, subjects, locations, program ratings, actors or directors from their buys.

“CTV represents the future of television advertising and the ability to pass standardized contextual data signals at scale will improve results for advertisers and lead to more investment for publishers,” Peer39 Mario Diez said. “We’ve spent the past several years looking to bring more effectiveness to CTV ad targeting. Together with Gracenote, we hope to create a strong ecosystem where advertisers, publishers and consumers all benefit from content supported through contextually relevant advertising.”