Gracenote has jumped into the contextual CTV ad space. It’s one where the Nielsen-owned unit intends to use its extensive metadata prowess and new categories to provide more transparency and standardization around content for advertisers and become the common taxonomy for CTV ad buyers and sellers to transact on for contextual targeting.
The move appears to be a natural extension for Gracenote, which has been a long-time key program-level metadata provider to major streamers and media companies, helping to power content search and advanced discovery features.
Now its going further to make its program-level metadata and new categories available so that publishers can provide more granular and transparent information – while still protecting competitive and user privacy - to agencies and advertisers about the content their ads run against. Ultimately, so they can serve messages with more relevancy by aligning with programming. It’s a notable entry for Gracenote, which earlier this month hired former Snapchat executive Jared Grusd as the vendor’s first chief executive officer.
As a bit of background, contextual targeting has arisen as a tactic for CTV advertising that, in part, is seen as a way to help avoid some privacy concerns around user identity and personal information and data. Instead of targeting based on specific person, brands can look to align their ads and message with content that’s being viewed – such as a kitchen appliance brand or retailer advertising during an episode of FX’s The Bear on Hulu (just as an example).
There are other types of contextual targeting based on different signals, such as location or time of day. But Gracenote’s move and expertise focuses on program and content metadata. It’s an area where CTV advertisers historically have lacked much visibility into details about the programs their ads run against and where descriptors are now evolving beyond simple genre categories like “documentary” to go deeper and give insight into other elements within content like emotion, theme, setting, or actor.
While still new to CTV (and not without challenges) contextual targeting can potentially provide a way for bands and advertisers to connect with audiences at the right moment with more relevant messaging – while also avoiding running ads that could turn off viewers if they air against the wrong type of content or serve a message that conflicts with the type or mood of a TV show or movie a consumer’s watching.
Contextual targeting key for CTV advertisers, Gracenote tees up partners
What’s more, CTV/OTT advertisers view the ability to target contextually as a key tactic for CTV campaigns, according to a recent survey by Advertiser Perceptions and Premion.
Asked about the value of targeting tactics for CTV campaigns, respondents cited contextual targeting (along with interest or behavior-based targeting) as important most often, with 28% ranking contextual as “very important” and 55% saying it’s “somewhat important.” Another 14% were neutral on the tactic.
And Gracenote’s coming out of the gate with a bevy of data platforms, publishers and agencies on board for its contextual CTV entry – which aims to bring scale and standardization to a fragmented landscape.
Specifically, it’s teaming up with contextual solutions provider Peer39 to make the Gracenote-powered contextual CTV categories available on Peer39 partner DSP platforms, enabling programmatic and direct CTV buys. Peer39 has 22 DSP partners. Those already using or planning to use the Gracenote categories through Peer39 include, Basis, Cadent, DeepIntent, Illumin (formerly Acuity), Index Exchange, Infillion (formerly Mediamath), Microsoft (formerly Xandr), Plex, Viant (formerly Adelphic) and Yahoo.
In addition, Gracenote tapped Magnite – the largest independent omnichannel sell-side advertising company – as the first SSP to support and scale the new categories.
Publishers signed on to boost their programming with Gracenote’s Contextual Video Data include Cineverse, DirecTV Advertising, virtual MVPD Philo, and free ad-supported streamers Tastemade and Xumo. On the agency side, Cannella Media and Ocean Media plan to use Gracenote’s CTV contextual categories to enhance targeting and deliver incremental reach.
Addressing content metadata standardization issues
Alongside the issue of a fragmented CTV ad landscape with numerous services and platforms, another hurdle for media buyers and sellers trying to transact CTV deals using contextual signals is a lack of standardization across those different publishers and partners in the advertising chain in terms of how they describe or categorize TV shows and films.
The Advertiser Perceptions survey illustrated some of the frustrations for advertisers investing in CTV. Asked about the biggest challenges in CTV/OTT advertising, the top two issues respondents cited (with equal importance at 39% each) were “transparency on where your ads are running” and “fragmentation/too many providers”.
And while not focused specifically on contextual targeting for CTV, the findings do support the notion that standard taxonomies could be useful for publishers and buyers alike. For example, Advertiser Perceptions found that 77% of advertisers work with thee or more CTV/OTT providers on a typical campaign to accomplish their goals – while 40% typically work with five or more CTV partners.
Gracenote aims to address the metadata standardization issue by providing a common taxonomy for CTV TV shows and films. The partnership with Peer39 also enables media buyers to target by keywords – meaning they can match campaigns against or exclude content based on elements like actor, director, sports type, mood, theme, subject, location and other in-content metadata. Gracenote also delivers program ratings and parental advisory categories so that advertisers can have more confidence to run against certain content or avoid programs that aren’t suitable.
“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,” said Mario Diez, CEO of Peer39, in a statement.
Streamers planning to use the Gracenote segments also emphasized a need for standardization to help advance contextual targeting on CTV.
That includes Evan Bregman, general manager at Tastemade, who, in the announcement, said the streamer “is a leader in passing as much content metadata as possible, so we’ve seen first hand how a lack of standardization can be an inhibitor to buyers.” The company is excited to team with Gracenote, he continued, “to overcome this hurdle and make it easy for advertisers to transact against contextual segments at scale.”
And Xumo’s VP of Ad Integrations & Operations Jerrold Son, in a statement, noted that Xumo is “optimistic about the power of contextual programming” to reach consumers based on programming.
“A standard taxonomy which both sellers and buyers can rely on is a critical component to the success of this type of targeting, and we’re pleased that Gracenote is making their trusted metadata, IDs and taxonomy available to the ecosystem,” Son stated.
Publishers, meanwhile, which tend to be known as protective of sharing their program-level information for competitive and business reasons – can utilize the metadata to package ad inventory “to unlock incremental revenue for content catalogs,” according to Gracenote. And part of Magnite’s role includes providing controls that allow publishers to decide when that content metadata is shared with advertisers. Also adding some peace of mind for publishers, Gracenote said “CTV publishers and content owners can be assured that media buyers will not have access to show, series or episode titles for targeting.”
Granular categories provide more opportunities to align
To help illustrate why robust content metadata is important to publishers and advertisers that want to invest and target contextually on CTV, let’s go back to the documentary example for a minute.
Advertisers could miss out on bid opportunities (and publishers on ad revenue) if content is only categorized by one broad description that leaves out additional nuances within programming and related potential target audiences. Gracenote’s announcement used the example of a sports documentary being only identified as “documentary” – leaving on the table opportunity for those who might want to reach content aligned with “sports enthusiasts” or other sports-related categories, limiting incremental reach. In another example, the vendor said content labeled as “drama” but set in Paris could also have several sub-genres (like “fashion” or “travel” – Emily in Paris anyone?) that could appeal to luxury goods or airline brands that want to match their message to the content.
The contextual advertising tactic can also be useful in a CTV environment where, unlike other digital formats such as social or web, viewing tends to be a household activity where the same TV device is used by multiple people or people are watching together (aka co-viewing) – so it’s not always clear who is in front of the TV at a given time.
Ocean Media VP of Media Operations Kevin Telkamp pointed to how Gracenote’s categories can help in that regard, while also noting contextual signals are key for optimizing campaigns.
“Since Connected TV devices are often shared between individuals in the same household, content classification helps to distinguish and better address the optimal consumers for brand messages,” said Telkamp in a statement. “We are excited about Gracenote's new standardized contextual data offering and the potential it holds for the betterment of the CTV ecosystem.”
And with U.S. CTV ad spending projected to grow to surpass $20 billion this year, Gracenote isn’t the only vendor looking to get in on the contextual targeting game.
Earlier this year IRIS.TV launched a contextual CTV PMP (private marketplace) deal library, serving as a central point between CTV publishers and content owners, contextual data partners, and ad server platforms to offer nearly 100 curated video-level contextual deal segments. IRIS.TV’s deal library utilizes a cohort of data partners (including Gumgum, KERV, Wurl and others) to analyze video-level content data frame-by-frame and create the contextual segments and categories that span emotion, mood, brand safety and others. In an earlier interview with StreamTV Insider, IRIS.TV co-founder and COO Richie Hyden noted part of the aim, through its content graph, is to create a standardized approach to programming data and allow buyers to transact deals using contextual signals more easily.
“If we want CTV to be as healthy a format as we have seen with search, social and display, the content that someone’s consuming needs to have an as equal seat at the table as the person,” Hyden said.
IRIS.TV has already touted initial positive results, including with a campaign run by quick-service restaurant Carl’s Jr. that delivered incremental lifts in store visits and sales, while delivering a 2.2x return on ad spend (ROAS).