Gracenote Brings “Treasure Trove” Of Content Data to CTV Market with Launch of New Ads Business

Why It Matters

The service gives advertisers the missing contextual signals needed to improve relevance and compliance, while giving publishers a new monetisation layer for otherwise opaque inventory.

Key Takeaways

• Gracenote launches CTV ad platform using metadata.
• 70% of bid requests miss basic genre labels.
• Advertisers target or avoid content via natural language queries.
• Index Exchange partnership enables programmatic deal creation.
• 81% UK consumers prefer ads matching viewed content.

Pulse Analysis

The connected‑TV ecosystem is expanding rapidly, yet advertisers still complain about opaque inventory signals. Gracenote’s research shows that roughly 70 percent of bid requests lack even basic genre metadata, hampering programmatic efficiency. Leveraging its legacy as the industry’s most extensive entertainment‑metadata provider, the company has repurposed that “treasure trove” to address the transparency gap. By embedding its identifiers across linear, FAST and streaming services, Gracenote creates a universal content fingerprint that can be read by both supply‑side and demand‑side platforms, laying the groundwork for more precise ad buying.

The newly launched Gracenote Ads suite sits on the AI‑driven Content Connect interface, allowing agencies to issue natural‑language queries such as “college‑football fans” or “George Clooney appearances.” The platform returns a curated list of titles, lets users deselect unwanted categories, and instantly generates a deal ID that can be activated through the Index Exchange SSP and major DSPs. Early adopters have already used the tool to align a beer brand with football programming while simultaneously excluding under‑age audiences, and to pair a restaurant campaign with Clooney‑starring content, delivering end‑to‑end reporting on every impression.

Contextual targeting is gaining traction as consumers increasingly expect ads that resonate with the surrounding program, a sentiment reinforced by an IAS survey where 81 percent of UK viewers prefer matched ads. Gracenote’s deep taxonomy—covering theme, mood, setting and time period—offers the granularity needed to scale such relevance across fragmented CTV inventory. While high‑profile sponsorships may still rely on direct buys, the platform’s ability to enrich programmatic bids could close the current 32 percent signal‑deficiency gap, opening new revenue streams for publishers and more efficient spend for brands.