Nielsen's Gracenote Creates Contextual Ad-Targeting Biz

• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, 6 hours ago

Gracenote, known within Nielsen for its metadata and IDs for ad targeting, has launched a contextual advertising business in an effort to become the taxonomy for connected television (CTV).

The business historically has supported mostly publishers, but when customers began putting Gracenote’s data into their ad products -- including AVOD and FAST streaming models -- Trent Wheeler, chief product offer at Gracenote, knew it was time to make a change.

“We really were pulled in by many of our customers,” he says.

Wheeler says that it took a long time to realize the need because “we didn’t have a way to standardize the process.”

To find really valuable contextual signals, he says, it’s important to analyze metrics in aggregate. Looking at the data in aggregate revealed “a valuable market for CTV,” he said, especially with long-tail content that exists in AVOD and FAST platforms.

The service launches with Peer39, a global provider of contextual suitability and quality solutions provider. For the first time, the Gracenote contextual CTV categories will become available on Peer39 partner demand side platform (DSP) platforms enabling programmatic CTV ad buys.

Gracenote has partnered with Magnite, an independent omnichannel sell-side advertising company, as its first supply-side platform (SSP) to support and scale these new CTV categories.

“This is our first product in this space,” Wheeler says. “There will be other partners in the future.”

Publishers testing the service include Cineverse, DIRECTV Advertising, Philo, Tastemade, and Xumo.

Gracenote Contextual Video Data describes individual TV shows and movies to provide more visibility and transparency for media buyers who want additional signals around content. Agencies such as Cannella Media and Ocean Media intend to use Gracenote CTV categories to optimize targeting and deliver incremental reach.  

“The idea that you can make an ad that matches the context of the viewer viewing it is powerful,” Wheeler says. “Understanding taxonomies and scale are the two most important things to customers now, so having the ability to buy across many platforms will come next.”

For example, the Gracenote ID gets embedded into pieces of content. Advertisers can look for that content in media buys across multiple streaming discovery platforms — AVOD or FAST — that will allow them to fulfill location orders in locations such as Italy or Spain.  

Wheeler said “we will get to performance” advertising, eventually, but today the service supports publishers and targeting.

Having the ability to support performance means being able to track what advertisers look for by providing measurements.

“We are increasing the metrics and will have the ability to provide reports that show performance, but for now it’s focused on publishers and giving advertisers more metrics,” he says.