Show-level visibility and granular contextual targeting enabled by Gracenote gives brands more confidence in CTV buys

Gracenote, the content data business unit of Nielsen, is helping brands gain confidence in CTV as an advertising channel through new business intelligence, market data and real-world campaign findings captured in a new contextual advertising report. Available now, the resource delivers actionable insights enabling brands to overcome the lack of transparency that hampers confidence in programmatic CTV ad buying .

EMARKETER estimates that programmatically bought CTV advertising will account for approximately $27 billion this year, more than 84% of the annual $32 billion expected to be spent on the channel. By 2028, they forecast that spending on CTV advertising will rise to $46.9 billion and surpass traditional TV advertising spend.

Despite the sizable budget allocation going to CTV, advertisers often lack insight into where their ads are appearing and whether they’re being seen by target audiences. Confidence that messages are reaching intended consumers within live sports through programmatic buys has room for improvement in particular.

A new analysis of sports programming highlighted in the Gracenote report revealed that only 14.3% of ad inventory included league information and only 17.9% included team information. With more complete and standardized program metadata available in the bidstream, advertisers benefit from contextual signals that enable better understanding of content, inform cross-platform CTV investments and facilitate granular ad targeting.

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Fragmentation is another big challenge in CTV. The extent of fragmentation in relation to sports comes into focus looking at the example of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever and their 2025 home opening game against rival, the Chicago Sky. This single game featuring two of the league’s brightest young stars in Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese was distributed by nearly 2,000 network affiliates and over-the-top channels on May 17.

Descriptive metadata combined with TV listing information attached to the program in the bidstream differentiated it from the more than 25 other live sports events played at the same time. This opened new opportunities for advertisers seeking to align with WNBA content to programmatically buy inventory within the Fever game and reach key target audiences.

“CTV is a strong channel for advertisers but opportunities exist to make it even better,” said Bill Michels, Chief Product Officer at Gracenote. “We’re pleased to provide new insights to brands seeking to maximize the potential of CTV and have confidence that the channel is effectively delivering on their advertising objectives.”

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Additional insights offered by the new Gracenote report include:

• Analysis of recent CTV ad investment in women’s sports programming
• Identification of incremental reach building opportunities within WNBA games
• A deep dive on different program signals that enhance transparency for programmatic advertising
• Case studies outlining strategies and results against objectives for recent contextual campaigns

Gracenote has long been trusted by leading publishers and platforms to power advanced content discovery and intuitive user experiences. Now, Gracenote program metadata and TV schedule information can serve as a standardized taxonomy for media buyers and sellers to transact direct and programmatic CTV buys on.