Nielsen’s Gracenote unit said it launched Gracenote Watch Prompts, a new dataset that provides video platforms with interesting facts about TV shows and movies designed to get viewers to watch them.

Gracenote Watch Prompts is designed to be paired with viewers' preference and consumption behavior data to deliver more personalized viewer recommendations and drive increased audience tune-in and time spent viewing.

The prompts highlight positive reviews, popular actors and creators and compare programs and movies to other popular content. 

For example, the information page for the HBO series Succession could highlight its 13 Emmy Award wins, including two in the prestigious Outstanding Drama Series category, to inform potential viewers about the show’s critical acclaim and motivate sampling. Or a page on Barbie could describe the offering as Legally Blonde meets The Lego Movie, providing a relatable analogy based on beloved films to pique interest. 

“Streaming services are challenged to continually enhance the user experiences they offer to delight viewers, increase time spent and reduce churn,” Trent Wheeler, chief product officer at Gracenote, said. “Watch Prompts leverages the expertise of Gracenote’s human editors along with scalability enabled by machine learning to deliver an entirely new data set that will help our customers evolve and meet these challenges.”

Gracenote Watch Prompts uses a mix of machine learning to create possible pitches based on Gracenote’s library of data on millions of video titles. Human editors review the machine-generated recommendations to ensure their accuracy and quality. The editor’s notes are also fed back into the algorithm, producing better future recommendations.

According to Nielsen’s 2023 U.S. Streaming Content survey, 74% of consumers either don’t know at all or only have a vague idea about what they want to watch when starting a streaming session. Fewer than three in 10 said they feel that recommendations are useful in helping them find compelling content, which Gracenote said means creating more effective and personalized promotions would help platforms engage viewers and improve monetization.

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.”

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit said it will help content owners launch free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels by letting them distribute their programs along with Gracenotes metadata, which makes the channels and programming easier to discover and monetize.

Gracenote launched its FAST Program last year in Europe. It is expanding into the U.S. as more consumer limit the number of streaming services they subscribe to and increase their use of free FAST channels.

“Go-to-market complexity in the FAST ecosystem can slow the process of launching channels and getting content in front of entertainment-hungry viewers,” said Tim Cutting, chief revenue officer at Gracenote. “By removing obstacles for content owners in the U.S., the Gracenote FAST Program facilitates wider content distribution, better content discovery and deeper viewer engagement. Ultimately, this helps participants maximize ad monetization against their valuable content assets and position themselves for success now and into the future.”

By leveraging Gracenote’s FAST metadata management and distribution services, content owners can make their programs and FAST channels easily accessible to viewers on major streaming platforms around the world, the company said.

The Gracenote FAST Program provides an ingestible schedule with standardized date and time formats, enhanced merchandising assets such as synopses and imagery to help draw in viewers and expanded metadata coverage, with more data tags to make content more discoverable.

Nielsen’s  Gracenote is offering its data on content availability to distributors to help their customers find streaming programming.

“As the entertainment ecosystem continues to evolve, a massive opportunity exists to drive the next iteration of streaming,” said Trent Wheeler, chief product officer at Gracenote. “For it to reach its full potential as a channel, streaming needs to deliver better user experiences enabled by search and discovery of all content - TV, movies and live sports - wherever it’s available. With our unmatched availability and program metadata, Gracenote is uniquely positioned to help customers drive success in streaming now and into the future.”

Gracenote has launched three primary offerings in its Availability product.

• Streaming Sports Catalogs - Highly accurate availability data, viewing options and deep links plus normalized metadata for live sports events helping CTV and digital customers point fans to games no matter what streaming service they’re on
• Streaming Video Catalogs - The industry’s most comprehensive and up-to-date TV program and movie availability data, viewing options, deep links and normalized metadata helping connect viewers to the entertainment content they want across various services
• FAST and Streaming Channels - High-quality normalized metadata for nearly 2,000 linear channels worldwide helping digital platforms launch FAST offerings more quickly and easily than ever

Together, they enable customers to address consumer pain points, deliver improved user experiences and drive better monetization, Gracenote said.

Gracenote, Nielsen’s content metadata unit said it added a Diversity Spotlight feature to its Studio System that will make diverse content creators and talent more discoverable and accessible.

Gracenote worked with the advocacy groups IllumiNative, Gold House, RespectAbility, National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) and Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE) to develop the system to meet diversity criteria and open new casting, funding and collaboration opportunities.

“In conversations with the industry, we’ve heard repeatedly that difficulty finding diverse creators to work with and inclusive projects to bring to screens is slowing the transformation everyone agrees is needed,” said Trent Wheeler, Gracenote’s chief product officer. “The expertise of our advocacy group partners, combined with the unmatched scale of Gracenote data and the reach of Studio System, holds the promise to accelerate representative content creation and bring real change to Hollywood.”

Also Read: Nielsen’s Gracenote Providing Data on On-Screen Diversity

Despite pledges to improve diversity, equity and inclusion, people of color, people with disabilities as well as members of the LGBTQIA community remain underrepresented in TV content, Gracenote said.

For example, Latinx representation in programming is only 5.7% although the group makes up 20% of the U.S. population, according to Gracenote Inclusion Analytics data. Representation of disabled people is only 6.6% even though one in four Americans has a disability.

“As we are working to drive representation of Native talent and projects in entertainment, a solution like Gracenote Diversity Spotlight takes our work to the next level — where Native creatives can be discovered with a tool that is already a trusted source for the decision-makers in the industry,” Crystal Echo Hawk, CEO and founder of IllumiNative, said. 

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit is revving up Gracenote Nexus Auto, a data platform designed to fuel in-vehicle media experiences for the new fleets of connected cars.

Nexus Auto delivers metadata for radio stations, streaming music, podcasts, sports, TV shows and movies to Android Automotive OS and other auto operating systems.

Gracenote said Nexus Auto will enable automakers to create branded entertainment systems with customizable features and advanced functionality.

“Automakers today see a massive opportunity to drive brand loyalty and build consumer relationships by up-leveling the in-car entertainment experiences they deliver,” Trent Wheeler, chief product officer at Gracenote, said. “Providing the industry’s broadest datasets covering the world’s most popular audio, sports and video content, Gracenote is uniquely positioned to help its auto customers delight drivers and passengers who want easy access to entertainment everywhere. We’re excited to launch Nexus Auto which empowers automakers to own relationships with users and realize the full potential of their infotainment offerings.”

Gracenote said Nexus Auto enables consumers to engage with favorite radio stations, music services and video streaming platforms via their car’s native interface.

For example, Champions League soccer followers can receive match updates when their favorite clubs are playing along with prompts to stream games when they’re parked. 

Or Suits watchers can binge episodes while charging their electric vehicles or while waiting for their children’s soccer practice to end and get personalized recommendations for new shows or movies to add to their watchlists. 

Even more will be possible when more vehicles drive themselves.

Gracenote has been in the auto business since 2001.  Since then, more than 250 million cars powered by Gracenote have shipped globally. 

Amid the talk about how streaming services are pruning their libraries, there is still more than enough choice to make it difficult for viewers to figure out what to watch next.

A new State of Play report by Nielsen’s Gracenote unit,  looking at the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico and Germany, found that audiences now have 2.7 million video titles available in 2023, up from 1.9 million in 2021. Nearly 87% of those titles are available via streaming, or 2.3 million, up from 1.7 million in 2021. 

Similarly, the number of channels has blown up, with 39,555 channels available in 2023 (about 80% of them in the U.S.), up from 36,096 in 2021.

“As it was during the age of broadcast television, content is the lifeblood of the digital, streaming-first media ecosystem,” Filiz Bahmanpour, VP of product at Gracenote, said. “So a clear understanding of content — where it’s available, what it’s about and whom it’s attracting — is more critical than ever.”

Viewers in June said they spent 10 minutes, 30 seconds looking for something to watch. That’s down from 11:16 last October but up from 7:24 in March 2019.

“The growing abundance of content and content sources has become overwhelming for audiences,” the report said. “Compared with strategies focused on adding more content to engage audiences, focusing on personalization and user experience can help audiences find what they’re looking for more quickly.”

With more streamers launching ad-supported products and using pricing to push consumers toward them, subscription VOD’s share of streaming minutes fell to 49% in May 2023 from 53% in the second half of 2021.

The report noted that the jump in the availability of free ad-supported streaming TV channels (FAST) was feeding a trend toward viewers watching classic TV.

“Compared with traditional SVOD services, which typically offer a mix of high-profile originals and titles acquired from other sources, FAST channels are predominantly set up to showcase library content — programming that originally aired somewhere else (usually on traditional TV),” the report said.

Time spent with acquired content is steadily rising, the report said. In the U.S. 60% of time spent streaming in May was dedicated to programming that first aired on linear channels. That’s up 5.2% from October 2022.

The report added that 18 of the 25 most-watched streaming programs by U.S. women 18-34 in 2022 were classic TV titles, with Grey’s Anatomy and Gilmore Girls beating out Stranger Things for the top spots. This audience watched just under 77 billion minutes of these shows, which is 73% of the total for all of the top 25 titles

Three FAST platforms — The Roku Channel, Pluto TV and Tubi — account 3.3% of total TV U.S. use in the U.S., and more viewing per month than all but the two top cable networks, Nielsen said.

Gracenote argues it can help media owners and platforms make finding content more efficient and lucrative with more granular metadata describing movies and show episodes.

“Audiences today expect seamless discovery and search across media types. Platforms and content owners can deliver on this expectation across digital channels by leveraging linked content IDs,“ the report said. “For example, if someone watches A Star is Born starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, they can easily navigate to the music featured in the film, jump to the video for Shallow, watch clips of Lady Gaga’s appearances on late night TV, or search for which podcasts she has appeared on.”

“When combined with viewership data, the ‘scenario’ video descriptors within Nielsen Gracenote’s Advanced Discovery suite can also help inform creators and distributors about which scenarios are trending from a viewer engagement perspective — and which ones aren’t — which can help identify whitespace development opportunities,“ the report said.

Gracenote said it joined the board of the Entertainment ID Registry, a system that puts a unique identifier on pieces of content, enabling media companies to keep track of where programming is appearing as streaming platforms proliferate.

Gracenote will work with EIDR to find new ways to automate, drive program discoverability and optimize return on content investment.

“I am thrilled to extend a very warm welcome to Gracenote as they join the EIDR Board,” Hollie Choi, managing director of EIDR, said. “Gracenote and EIDR share in the mission to improve the accuracy and efficiency of content management and distribution for the media and entertainment industry. I’m looking forward to finding ways for our two organizations to work together on our common goals.”

Gracenote provides TV and movie metadata through its Gracenote IDs, The metadata includes program descriptions, cast lists, images and platforms available.

“As a customer-first organization, Gracenote continually seeks new ways to meet the needs of our valued clients and the broader media and entertainment industry,” said Filiz Bahmanpour, VP of Product, Gracenote. “We are enthusiastic about joining the EIDR Board and will use this seat at the table to open conversations with the industry on how we can work together to bring incremental value.”

Nielsen has told the Federal Communications Commission it is working on a product to analyze "behind the camera" as well as on-screen diversity that could give the agency most of the information it may be looking for without making programmers and distributors, including streamers owned by media companies with FCC licenses, have to certify that information.

Nielsen said it is already working on such an offering because advertisers want to ensure they are "investing equitably in content that includes diverse creators, casts and themes."

Earlier this year, Fuse Media led groups petitioning the FCC to collect content diversity data, including from those co-owned streaming services. They argued the regulator's failure to "regularly collect and report on data regarding the demographic diversity of vendors providing one of the most critical inputs to the video marketplace: content" did not square with its charge to promote competition and diversity in the video marketplace.

Program distributors of all stripes have pushed back on the petition, which the FCC is still considering. They say, among other things, that there are no market failures the new collection and certification requirements would necessitate, that the FCC likely does not have the authority to mandate data collection from third-party vendors and more.

Internet-service providers have also said if the FCC does start putting this mandate on streaming services affiliated with its licensees — Disney Plus, Hulu, Peacock and Paramount Plus — but not on unaffiliated streamers like Netflix, Apple TV Plus or Amazon Prime Video, the FCC certainly won't be getting the view of the marketplace it is looking for.

Also: ISPs Tell FCC to Reject Fuse Data Petition

Enter Nielsen, which has told the FCC it may have a solution if the commission does grant the petition, and from products it says are already in the marketplace using information gleaned from its metadata subsidiary, Gracenote.

"When operationalized, this new product could enable Nielsen customers and the FCC to obtain much of the data sought by petitioners — without the need for certifications from programmers or distributors," Nielsen told the FCC, according to a document filed with the commission.

While Nielsen said it could help with diversity data collection across various distribution platforms, it used the challenge faced by streamers as an example.

"[A] streaming service acquires the rights to transmit thousands of programs from hundreds of sources," Nielsen said. "These programs, in turn, have tens of thousands of individual episodes — each of which, in turn, has a budget, location and associated talent such as a producer, a director, numerous actors and so on."

Gracenote already helps thousands of companies "gather, compile, check, analyze, and organize" all that data, Nielsen said, so it could be "a powerful tool for measuring and analyzing on-screen diversity and inclusion."

Nielsen said it can already say that Black women have a 57% share of screen time on the HBO show Insecure, and can also compare that to the general population for that show's audience, or that Native Americans make up .05% of total screen time on cable.

Now, Nielsen is working on a new product, using Gracenote metadata, that will provide metrics for off-screen diversity. For example, it could compare the diversity of writers and producers for Amazon Prime Video fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power with those of HBO's Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon. That's just the sort of information "contemplated in the [Fuse] petition," it points out, "without any of the complexity" of making FCC-regulated companies with streaming services have to obtain such diversity data from programmers and file it with the agency. ■

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit introduced a new set of data that tells content owners and distributors whether individual programs are binged by consumers, viewed loyally or performed similarly to other programs.

The new product, called the Distribution Dynamics and Program Availability Archive, is designed to provide the content marketplace with additional insights and help buyers and sellers optimize their licensing and acquisition strategies by understanding how certain titles drive subscribers' acquisition and retention.

The company also launched the Gracenote Program Availability Archive, which provides information about the past placement of programs across various streaming services over a five-year span. The data includes episode titles, season and episode number, original air data, and availability start and end dates.

Also: Nielsen’s Gracenote Unit Launches Product for Streaming Platforms

“As the streaming business continues to put huge investment into creating content, we are seeing the need for new metrics and insights to help guide monetization efforts,” said Simon Adams, chief product officer at Gracenote. “Gracenote’s Content Analytics solutions, including our new Distribution Dynamics and Program Availability Archive datasets, meet these needs by providing owners and buyers trusted data and intelligence to inform decision-making around their content strategies.”

The new products are anchored by Gracenote’s Inclusion Analytics and Audience Predict offerings. The company says the portfolio helps creators, buyers and distributors develop, release and promote content for their target audiences in the smartest ways. The data sets utilize Gracenote’s program metadata and content IDs linked to Nielsen’s current audience measurement system. ■

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit said it launched Gracenote Streaming Channel Data, a new product that enables content aggregators to help viewers find data on ad-supported linear streaming TV channels and virtual multichannel video programming distributors.

Streaming Channels Data provides content discovery platforms with Gracenote’s database of schedules for linear channels and metadata about programs including images, descriptions and talent information.

“As consumers look for free ad-supported TV content to complement their on-demand services, easy integration and discovery options become more important than ever for aggregator platforms,” said Simon Adams, chief product officer at Gracenote. “By solving for these challenges, Gracenote Streaming Channels Data helps platform customers work towards optimizing their user experiences and securing their positions as go-to destinations for viewers.”

The new product is an addition to Gracenote’s streaming portfolio aimed at improving search and discovery of entertainment and sports programming across platforms. Gracenote said it should be particularly useful to help viewers find programming on the pop-up channels platforms set up for special occasions and react to particular events. ■

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit said it is launching a new tool that predicts how content will perform with audiences.

Audience Predict can be used by content owners to determine the most effective distribution strategies, and by networks and streaming services looking to make decisions about programming investments.

Also: Gracenote Personalizes Program Guide Images to Boost Viewership

The product incorporates Nielsen audience measurement data, Gracenote content metadata and advanced machine learning technology to forecast audience size, composition reach and viewing minutes on different broadcast and streaming platforms, and employing various lead-ins, release patterns, air dates or time slots.

Also: Nielsen’s Gracenote Providing Data on On-Screen Diversity

“The media ecosystem primarily associates Gracenote with advanced search and content discovery enabling TV providers to connect viewers to programming, but our industry-leading entertainment metadata and IDs have equally strong applications powering new analytics which inform smarter business decisions,” said Simon Adams, chief product officer at Gracenote. “By helping the content community see into the future around program performance today, we’re helping them solve one of the most vexing issues they face - distribution complexity. This expands our larger Content Analytics offerings which help the entire media industry make more informed decisions.”

Gracenote plans to show off Audience Predict and its capabilities at the upcoming CES conference in Las Vegas.■

Nielsen said it would be working with ad tech firm Extreme Reach as it moves to measuring the audiences for individual commercials and revamps its outdated measurement system.

Last year, Nielsen announced plans to launch Nielsen One, which will add more big data to the company’s vaunted audience panels to provide more granular, consistent and comparable metrics across traditional and digital video, including creating ratings for individual commercials.

The demand for change became more urgent earlier this year as the industry watchdog, the Media Rating Council, confirmed claims by the networks that Nielsen undercounted viewing during the pandemic. The MRC suspended its seal of approval for Nielsen’s national and local ratings services.

Since the unveiling, Nielsen has made a series of announcements about the technological and methodological changes it plans to make to implement Nielsen One.

To generate individual commercial ratings, Nielsen said it will expand its relationship with Extreme Reach, which will encode national linear TV commercials with Nielsen watermarks, making them easier to track. For commercials without watermarks, Nielsen said it will use content signatures from its Gracenote unit. This will mark the first time Nielsen employed Gracenote as part of its audience measurement system.

The new individual commercial rating will replace the current C3 rating used for buying and selling most TV commercials. C3 measures the average viewership of the commercial minutes within a program when it is seen live or watched on a delayed basis over three days. 

The C3 metric was adopted in 2007 as a compromise that accounted for people zapping and zipping through commercials, while adding in some viewing via DVRs and VOD. Nielsen’s systems at the time couldn’t measure viewing in increments of less than a minute, disappointing buyers and advertisers who wanted to know exactly how many people watched their commercials.

Also: Ad Industry Seeks Alternatives After Nielsen Loses Seal of Approval

This year, the TV industry’s dissatisfaction with Nielsen has increased and the search for alternatives has intensified. Last week, NBCUniversal announced that it was working with more than 100 measurement companies on updated ways to measure audiences and advertising impacts.

Nielsen said that its move to individual commercial metrics would provide the industry with something its has been demanding.

“Giving the industry true, trusted metrics that offer harmonization across platforms is the bedrock to revolutionizing the cross-media buying and selling process and a foundational step toward Nielsen One,” said Kim Gilberti, senior VP, product management at Nielsen. “By transforming our TV measurement and moving to Individual Commercial Metrics, both media buyers and sellers will be able to maximize the value of their inventory as well as capitalize and drive return on investment of their advertising spend across the rapidly converging traditional and digital landscapes.”

Nielsen said that in early 2022, it will enhance its process for collecting and crediting watermarks, enabling the detection of watermarks more frequently within a given minute, allowing for credit of shorter duration events, such as individual ads.

Nielsen said that by streamlining its crediting systems and migrating them to a cloud-based infrastructure, it will be able to deliver to clients two streams of data in parallel: the current C3 metric and the Nielsen Individual Commercial Metrics that will be fundamental for Nielsen One.

Extreme Reach already manages the ad assets for 90 of the top 100 advertisers.

“We’re very pleased to collaborate with Nielsen on this important step in improving workflow efficiency for marketing teams, which has been at the core of our mission at Extreme Reach for over a decade,” said Gaurav Agarwal, chief operating officer at Extreme Reach. 

“ER is uniquely positioned to enable measurement of those assets at greater scale. Nielsen’s ongoing efforts to embrace the morphing worlds of linear and digital TV now provide a means for marketers and their agencies to understand and value digital and linear TV commercials in a directly comparable way, which is a distinct improvement for the industry,” Agarwal said.

In a previous announcement about how Nielsen One is being implemented, Nielsen described its strategy for handling consumer identities while measuring audiences in a post-cookie environment. ■

Streaming channel operator Crackle Plus said it has licensed program metadata from Nielsen’s Gracenote unit in order to make it easier for viewers searching for something to watch to find its content.

Gracenote’s metadata and content IDs are already used by most distributors, which will make it simpler to integrate Crackle Plus content into menus and recommendation engines, the companies said.

Crackle Plus, part of Chicken Soup for the Soul, has been expanding its ad supported video-on-demand products and will be launching free ad-supported streaming TV linear channel versions of its Crackle and Popcornflix brands.

Also: Making FAST Video Crackle Again with Philippe Guelton and Chicken Soup for the Soul

“We wanted to be able to enrich our content with more metadata and more imagery,” Rekha Peruvemba, director of product at Crackle Plus, told Broadcasting+Cable. “Gracenote is already utilized by a lot of the platforms we are live on, so it was the obvious next step as we continue to grow in the industry.”

Also: Gracenote Personalizes Program Guide Images to Boost Viewership

Peruvemba added that there are some distributors that only use Gracenote metadata, which meant until now, they wouldn’t carry Crackle Plus. She declined to identify those platforms.

“Using Gracenote’s IDs actually allows Crackle Plus to be launched on more platforms, so you see an immediate growth there,” she said.

Gracenote’s metadata includes information about a show or movies, such as its genre and cast, plus assets including photos that can be used to help viewers find it. And with the explosive growth of streaming--and the increasing appreciation of data--Gracenote is in a good position.

“Streaming is a very competitive marketplace at this point in time. You can be Disney and when you launch a new Marvel streaming show you’re pretty confident you’re going to draw an audience,” said Trent Wheeler, senior VP of product at Gracenote. “But when you don’t have something like that, what are you going to do? Your storefront is really search and discovery. Crackle’s got great content. Crackle's been around for a long time and has a very loyal audience base, but its content still has to be found.”

Most programmers have good metadata for their new and original content. But as time goes on, assets get lost or disorganized. That makes Gracenote’s catalogue invaluable, Wheeler said.

Since Gracenote’s metadata taxonomy has already been accepted by distributors, new content can be efficiently onboarded, without risk that search terms could be misunderstood or the need for manual integration by the distributor’s operations team.

“Those people are getting a hundred different feeds from channels,” Wheeler said. "It’s good to know that when you publish your content, your key downstream partners who are driving all your traffic can use it. In this ecosystem that’s a large benefit.”

Gracenote also offers clients personalized image and video descriptor products designed to help drive and optimize advanced discovery.

“The Gracenote technical team has been extremely helpful in trying to create a systematic way of pulling all of that information into our system,” Peruvemba said. "They’ve been a big help making sure that we know step by step exactly what we need to do to fully utilize everything they have available to us.”

Crackle Plus AVOD networks offer audiences over 90,000 hours of content across its network of streaming services. They are currently distributed through 50 touch points in the U.S. with plans to expand to over 64 touch points.■

Gracenote launched a new product that personalizes the images promoting titles in program guides and other user interfaces that the company said boosts viewing for video distributors.

The product, Personalized Imagery, uses Gracenote program descriptors and cast information to help providers optimize program discovery and third-party recommendation results.

Also Read: Nielsen’s Gracenote Providing Data on On-Screen Diversity

Gracenote, a subsidiary of Nielsen, said that personalizing the user experience resulted in an 11.2% increase in time spent watching title and a 7.7% lift in the number of titles watched in a recent pilot by a top-five streaming service in the U.S.

“Viewers looking for new shows to watch today rely on program guides and UIs to browse available content choices,” said Kamran Lotfi, VP, product at Gracenote. “But a huge opportunity exists to deliver highly personalized user experiences that highlight content in ways that resonate more with viewers. With Gracenote Personalized Imagery, we are offering TV providers a proven way to increase engagement with their content and maximize viewership on their platforms.”

Gracenote Personalized Imagery is the newest product in the company’s Advanced Discovery suite of services, which also includes Video Descriptors and Video Popularity Score.

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit officially launched Inclusion Analytics, which provides data about on-screen diversity and representation.

Nielsen previously told clients about the Gracenote’s diversity data at a meeting last year.

Inclusion Analytics will enable advertisers to identify and target inclusive content as part of its planning for campaigns and product placements.  

Distributors can also use the data to curate their content for special events such as Women’s History Month.

Inclusion Analytics combines Gracenote’s program metadata and Studio System celebrity race and ethnicity information with Nielsen television and SVOD ratings. 

The analytics include share of screen for an identity group; an inclusion opportunity index that compares share of screen with the representation in the population, and inclusion audience index, comparing share of screen to representation within the program’s viewing audience.

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit said it is launching Sports Widgets designed to provide statistics, scores and live updates to vans watching on smart TV platforms and in autos.

The widgets present previews of upcoming live games and provide fans with updates as games are played. Fans can use the widget to navigate to watch the game either via broadcast or streaming service at home. They also can keep drivers connected to the teams they follow.

Also Read: Gracenote Helps Fans Find Live Sports on OTT Services

"Live sports are an increasingly important differentiator for entertainment platforms seeking to increase user engagement," said Simon Adams, chief product officer of Gracenote. "For years, Gracenote has powered sports viewing experiences for the largest TV providers in the world. With Gracenote Global Sports Widgets, CE companies and automakers can easily launch new sports experiences which maximize audience engagement and drive consumption while minimizing development costs and engineering resources."

The widgets use the Gracenote Global Video Data and IDs that underpin search and discovery services. 

At launch, Gracenote Sports Widgets will cover the NBA, NFL, and NHL, plus international soccer leagues including the English Premier League, the Bundesliga in Germany, Ligue 1 in France, Serie A in Italy, La Liga in Spain, Brasileirão Assaí in Brazil, Liga BBVA MX in Mexico and the KBO baseball league in South Korea.

With streaming video services paying a lot for sports programming, Nielsen’s Gracenote unit has created Streaming Sports Catalogs to help subscribers find live games to watch.

Gracenote said its new product enables cross-platform search for sports, and lets viewers find games across different over-the-top sources.

“While increasing consumer choice, the rapid rise of sports-driven OTT services is making it ever more challenging for sports fans to find and watch their favorite teams play,” said Simon Adams, chief product officer of Gracenote. “Our breakthrough Streaming Sports Catalogs solution allows TV providers to connect sports programming to its most fervent fans in a simple way that enables powerful new engagement opportunities.”

At launch, the Streaming Sports Catalogs cover games played by the major North American professional leagues playing football, basketball, baseball and hockey. It also tracks tennis and golf. More sports will be added over time, until every ball, cleat, sneaker and sock found on streaming is searchable.

Gracenote’s product relies on the company's metadata expertise and features descriptions for live sports, deep links and information about related content on OTT services.  

Nielsen’s Gracenote unit has hired David Faulknor as senior VP, product management, for its sports business.

Faulknor, who had been at NBCUniversal, is expected to bring insights analytics and data to help sports federations, leagues, teams, media and brands make better business decisions and drive fan engagement.

On Faulknor’s agenda will be providing clients with a clear view into sports fan interests, media consumption and purchasing habits around the world as well as placing a value on the social-media elements of multi-channel campaigns. He will also lead efforts to unify the large global Nielsen Sports and Gracenote Sports product teams and build a single, world-class data and insights organization.

“Sports holds the power to inspire, entertain and engage people around the world like no other form of content,” Faulknor said. “With access to best-in-class datasets, technologies and talent, I look forward to driving product innovation at Nielsen Gracenote that will enable our customers to fully leverage the massive power of sports.”

Gracenote said it is providing data to help over-the-top services in Europe develop program guides and deliver better search and navigation capabilities to viewers.

The Nielsen unit said the expansion makes it the leading OTT guide provider, covering 13 markets in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific.

Gracenote’s data is also being used by smart TV makers to help consumers deal with the myriad streaming services that are popping up and manage proprietary feeds and ID systems.

“While much of the focus in the ‘Streaming Wars’ conversation has been on the largest catalogs and original content, the winners will also understand how to successfully integrate with a diverse set of video platforms,” said Simon Adams, chief product officer at Gracenote.  “As this new generation of video providers emerges, Gracenote is playing to its long-standing role providing the critical metadata, unique IDs and rich imagery that power killer user experiences and drive tune-in and engagement.”

Gracenote said it offers a number of services to streaming services aimed at making finding content to watch easier. Those include:

• Unique Gracenote IDs, which provide connectivity between related content assets to power universal search capabilities which surface TV show and movie availability across different services and make possible easy one-click viewing;
• Deep Descriptive Metadata, enabling intuitive content navigation and nuanced recommendations that connect viewers to the shows and movies they love - and discover new ones to enjoy - based on Advanced Video Descriptors criteria such as mood, theme, setting and character attributes;
• Custom Content Imagery to populate OTT Guide interfaces and carousels with iconic movie and TV series, season and episode-level images as well as cast/celebrity photos that capture the essence of content - enabling visual navigation and enhancing binge-viewing sessions; and
• Streaming Service Feeds that provide deep linking, audio/video quality, content availability and a critical data structure required to integrate a streaming service into mobile, set-top boxes and Smart TVs.

Nielsen has expanded its dynamic ad insertion (DAI) test program for live, linear national TV shows, bringing in another programming partner, A+E Networks.

Nielsen also said that it's adding a technology partner, MediaTek, which it says makes semiconductors that are in half of the world’s smart TVs.

The program will conduct live trials starting next month in five U.S. markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Tampa.

At its upfront presentation in May, Nielsen announced that it would partner on the test with CBS and Gracenote, the latter of which will contribute its video content recognition technology.

As part of the pilot, A+E Networks and CBS will be the first programmers to dynamically replace traditional linear TV advertisements, as well as show and network promotions, with targeted advertisements.

“Nielsen recognizes the huge opportunity addressable TV presents for our clients,” said Kelly Abcarian, senior VP of product leadership for Nielsen, in a statement. “So, we’ve worked hard to create an advanced DAI solution that covers everything from ad targeting to delivery. As the result of our expanded DAI pilot with leading smart TV platforms and manufacturers and some of the largest broadcast and cable networks, marketers will be able to better realize the value of their advertising inventory, achieve maximum return on their ad spend and viewers will see messages that are most relevant to them.”

The dynamic ad replacement and delivery platform considers audience gender and age, as well as advanced demographics to deliver addressable advertising. Advertisers and networks will be able to leverage the joint Gracenote-MediaTek DAI solution to expand their traditional linear TV ad offerings and maximize the value of their ad inventory.

Gracenote has introduced a new offering that’s tailored for a new class of virtual MVPDs and covers and integrates data for both live TV and VOD libraries.

The new TV metadata and electronic program guide offering is targeted to smart TVs and other streaming devices, including gaming consoles, that deliver live OTT TV services, and aims to make linear and VOD content more searchable and discoverable, the company said.

Gracenote, now part of Nielsen, said it’s adding that capability as a growing mix of streaming platforms extend access to vMVPD services along their own VOD catalogs and are challenged by integrating the live TV and on-demand worlds of video.

One such example includes sitcoms and dramas that offer new episodes on live TV through OTT TV services even as back episodes are made available on network TV apps and other OTT video service providers.

Gracenote said its new offering enables streaming services to show a unified search result.

“Our newest data solution, designed for cable and satellite operators who offer virtual services as well as standalone OTT providers, bridges the best of live linear programming with on-demand libraries to make content easier to find and watch across platforms,” Simon Adams, GM of video and sports at Gracenote, said in a statement. “By empowering all players in the market to deliver outstanding user experiences, Gracenote is helping them stay ahead of shifting viewing habits and position themselves for success.”

Gracenote hasn’t announced partners that will use the new platform, but is actively working to on-board customers.

Dish Network, the company behind Sling TV, recently migrated to TiVo’s metadata platform. DirecTV, which offers an OTT service called DirecTV Now, is among Gracenote’s listed customers.

Tribune media has struck a deal to sell its video, music and sports digital data business, Gracenote, to Nielsen for $560 million in cash.

Tribune will retain its consumer-facing Covers.com and ProSportsDaily.com.

Tribune says it will use most of the proceeds from the sale to pay down debt as well as going toward a dividend to shareholders in the first quarter of 2017. Tribune says it will also continue its $400 million stock repurchase plan.

RELATED: Gracenote Puts Up $54M for Two Sports Data Firms

Tribune has only owned Gracenote since 2014, when it bought the company from Sony for approximately $170 million. Gracenote collects, curates and delivers info about TV shows, sports, movies and music for clients including Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV, Amazon and Apple in the U.S., Europe, India, Latin America and Australia. Tribune cited Gracenote's strong presence in streaming music services, mobile devices and automotive music applications.

Moelis & Company and Guggenheim Securities were financial advisors on the deal.

“We are extremely proud to have grown our Digital and Data business into a vibrant global enterprise, with talented and creative people who deliver outstanding service to blue-chip clients around the world,” said Tribune Media President Peter Liguori. “From a strategic standpoint, however, we are pleased to be streamlining our company so that we can focus even more intently on seizing future opportunities for our local television and entertainment business."

Big Data can help companies make predictions about a lot of things. How much bandwidth will I need two years from now? What are my opportunities to upsell a customer? How vulnerable is my network to an outage? Which country will win the most medals in Rio this summer?

The latter is what Gracenote is taking an informed stab at today using its trove of sports data, including performance info tabulated from thousands of events since the 2012 Summer Games, including World Championships and World Cups (or equivalent), and an Olympic database that goes back more than 100 years.

Gracenote, which launched a sports unit last year after acquiring two sports data firms last year (Infostrada Statistics B.V. and SportsDirect), revealed a “Virtual Medal Table” that predicts that Team U.S.A. will come away with 102 medals (42 gold, 29 silver and 31 bronze), beating out China’s 78 medals, Russia’s 66 and host country Brazil’s 25.

Broken down further, Gracenote’s forecast  also sees the U.S. leading the most popular events at the Summer Games -- swimming, artistic gymnastics and athletics (track and field) – expected to bring home 31 medals for athletics, 24 for swimming and 8 for gymnastics.

Among Gracenote’s predictions for individual athletes, Gracenote’s data sees Michael Phelps notching five gold medals (100m butterfly, 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley, 4x100 medley, 4x200m freestyle), and one bronze medal (4x100m freestyle), with Katie Ledecky nabbing four gold medals (200m freestyle, 400m freestyle, 800m freestyle, 4x200m freestyle).

Gracenote’s data also sees Argentina getting just two medals, which would be its worst result since Barcelona 1992. 

Gracenote’s findings arrive about 100 days before the Rio games get underway on August 5. We’ll check back at the conclusion of the global sporting event to see how they fared.

Las Vegas – A Parks Associates-run Connections Summit panel about converged video services here at CES took a stab at what 2016 will be the Year Of with respect to video, and with the understanding that 2015 was the Year of OTT.

As you might imagine, the answers ran pretty closely to the core businesses of the panelists.

Rich Cusick, general manager of video at metadata giant Gracenote, sees 2016 as the Year of Interoperability, noting that everything under the Sun is being connected to the Intertubes, but not everything works together without kluges.

Interoperability, he said, will draw the “true power of the connected home…I think consumers are going to demand it.”

Scott Boyarsky, vice President, product development and planning at Comcast, agreed that 2015 was the year OTT went mainstream, but wondered if it will deliver on its promise as rights and other challenges get ironed out.

As for 2016: it will be the Year of Choice for consumers. “Will they be overwhelmed by that choice? That’s TBD.”

Bulent Celebi, co-founder and chairman of WiFi specialist AirTies, and John Driver, CEO of Lynx Technology, both believe we’ll have a replay: 2016 will be another Year of OTT.

Driver reasoned that OTT hasn’t taken off in all geographies and demographics, so there’s still plenty more ground to cover.

On the geo-front, Celebi said OTT has been a U.S. phenomenon in part because home construction is sheetrock and wood – materials that don’t stop WiFi in its tracks. Europe and Japan? A different story.

OTT won’t become a global mainstay until that coverage issue has been realized.

Jim Denney, vice president of product management and strategy at TiVo, believes 2016 will be the Year of Personalization as platforms adapt to individual user tastes and preferences.

Ben Weinberger, senior VP and chief product officer at Sling TV and founder of Digitalsmiths (now part of TiVo), held that if OTT and personalization are indeed big in 2016, that bodes well for his OTT-TV service. Therefore, 2016, he said, will be The Year of Sling TV.

Wishful thinking or a self-fulfilling prophecy? Time will tell.

Based on this week’s travel snafus that took a toll on this week's gadgetfest, we’ll all hope that 2016 is  not the Year of Flight Delays and Cancellations. 

Rovi said Kathy Weidman has joined the interactive programming guide and video navigation company as senior vice president and general manager, metadata.

In that role, will lead the metadata business group, overseeing product management, engineering and data operations. She reports to John Burke, Rovi’s EVP and COO, and will be based out of the corporate offices in Radnor, Pa.

“Kathy’s industry background coupled with her leadership roles are a powerful combination as we continue rapid expansion of our metadata business,” said Burke, a former Motorola and Arris exec who joined Rovi in March. “Kathy’s extensive experience and deep knowledge of the media industry and its technologies will help further drive our innovation in products and solutions for our customers.”

Weidman most recently was an executive consultant at MoonBeam Partners Limited,  and is also late of Red Bee Media Limited, a U.K.-based media services unit acquired by Ericsson in May  that counts clients such as BBC, Canal Plus, Discovery, Google, ITV, Liberty Global, Microsoft, Samsung, UKTV, TV4 and Virgin Media.

She is joining Rovi amid a metadata market that is growing more heated and competitive. Of recent note, Rovi rival Gracenote has been on an M&A tear, having most recently put up $19 million for  HWW, an Australia-based provider of TV and movie data to a range of pay-TV operators.

Keeping its eye fixed on global growth opportunities, Gracenote's buying binge continued Thursday as the company announced it is shelling out $19 million for HWW, an Australia-based provider of TV and movie data to a range of pay-TV operators and on-demand and program guide services.

Gracenote, which counts Rovi among its competitors in the entertainment data sector, said the acquisition of HWW from Mi9 (owned by Nine Entertainment Co.) will enable it to expand its reach into the Australian TV and digital entertainment market and position it for further growth in the larger Asia Pacific region.

Sydney-based HWW has about 40 customers across the region, including Foxtel, Telstra, Freeview,  Fetch TV, Samsung and Yahoo, and a database with about 30,000 movies and 117,000 TV series. HWW has about 25 employees

Gracenote, now under new CEO John Batter, the former chief of M-GO, has been on somewhat of an M&A tear as it looks to expand and broaden its core platform and spur global growth. Last month, it put up $50 million for Baseline, another movie and TV data service. In July, Tribune Digital Ventures (now integrated with Gracenote) acquired What’s-ON, a TV search and electronic program guide data provider for India and the Middle East, for $27 million. With the HWW deal factored in, Gracenote has shelled out nearly $100 million for a set of acquisitions.

The HWW deal, Batter said, keys on the international component of Gracenote’s three-pronged growth strategy. It’s also looking to expand by broadening the quality and breadth of its core metadata platform for music and video and by attacking new verticals, such as sports and video games.

“Many global customers are asking us to expand internationally as their footprint expands internationally. They’re looking for us to be [their] one-stop-shop on a global basis,” Batter said.

While Rovi is considered Gracenote’s primary competitor, the market is still made up of many local and regional players. Some of those players might fit into Gracenote’s future M&A activity as the company decides where it’s best to buy into the market or build something that is tailored for specific international markets.  

“We’ll continue to expand internationally pretty aggressively and look at it on a market-by-market basis,” Batter said. “Europe is certainly a place of emphasis,” he added, pointing to Gracenote’s existing business in that region with TiVo, Virgin Media, and Com Hem, among others.

Tribune Co. completed its $170 million acquisition of Gracenote from Sony Corp. of America earlier this year and has since integrated Gracenote with Tribune Media Services (TMS).

Gracenote will keep its data vaults stocked with more movie and TV information following its $50 million acquisition of Baseline.

Gracenote said the deal, announced Wednesday, will deepen its existing video metadata by adding detailed, descriptive information about movies and TV productions from Baseline that will help it “power next generation TV and video experiences.”

Baseline’s database contains information from more than 300,000 movies and TV projects, and data on nearly 1.5 million TV and film pros via its The Studio System product, Gracenote said, noting that Baseline’s licensed data powers video search and discovery features for a number of TV Everywhere apps as well as online video services run by companies such as Hulu and Vudu.

Baseline will continue to operate from its Los Angeles headquarters.

“The acquisition of Baseline continues our strategy to build upon our existing metadata expertise to advance Gracenote’s leadership in entertainment data and services,” said Peter Liguori, president and chief executive officer of Tribune Media, in a statement (Tribune acquired Gracenote for $170 million earlier this year). “We’ve made strategic acquisitions in the last few months that have expanded our geographic footprint and have strengthened Gracenote’s services. In combination with our recent international acquisitions, Baseline is yet another example of our commitment to provide customers the highest standard of global solutions in the metadata space.”

“For years, Baseline has served as the trusted source for entertainment data to help digital media companies, studios and agencies stay on top of a fast changing industry,” added John Batter, who recently left M-GO to become CEO of Gracenote. “Baseline’s deep production data coupled with its existing relationships with the studio community will help us improve the depth and breadth of the data we offer to existing Gracenote customers, as well as provides us a foundation to build products aimed squarely at serving the entertainment industry."

Gracenote’s acquisition follows other recent M&A activity for the company. In July Tribune Digital Ventures acquired What’s-ON, a TV search and electronic program guide data provider for India and the Middle East, for $27 million.