Advertisers gain granular CTV targeting and turnkey reporting across eligible inventory from connected supply partners, without being tied to a single SSP

NEW YORK, Aug. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Gracenote, Nielsen’s content intelligence business, and The Trade Desk, a leading global advertising technology company, today announced a new partnership that brings content-level precision to programmatic connected TV (CTV) buying. The collaboration marks Gracenote’s first integration with a demand-side platform, giving advertisers greater control over content-based planning and targeting, as well as direct access to program-level reporting within The Trade Desk.

Programmatic CTV buyers often lack consistent, detailed information about the programming associated with available inventory. Content signals can vary across publishers and supply paths, limiting advertisers to broad categories for targeting and leaving them with little visibility into where their ads appeared.

Gracenote’s 2026 CTV advertising study underscores the disconnect and demand for better program-level intelligence. Among 500 media planners, TV buyers and programmatic traders surveyed at U.S. agencies and brands, 91% of programmatic traders said the lack of show-level data limits CTV advertising, while 95% of media planners said show-level reporting would be valuable.

The integration will enable advertisers to use Gracenote’s content IDs, metadata and standardized taxonomy in The Trade Desk to move beyond genre and set more precise curation and targeting criteria. They can combine this intelligence with other platform signals and activate campaigns across eligible inventory from connected supply partners, extending coverage outside Gracenote’s direct SSP integrations. Advertisers can also see the programs in which their ads appeared, providing a stronger foundation for future planning and optimization.

“While programmatic CTV has scaled significantly, it has remained tethered to a playbook built around user behavior and developed for web and mobile,” said Bill Michels, chief product officer at Gracenote. “That data remains critical, but content intelligence deserves a more prominent role in establishing targeting criteria and driving performance. With Gracenote’s persistent identifiers and rich content taxonomy, we are bringing this scale to The Trade Desk, providing customers with greater control before campaigns run and clearer accountability after.”

“Advertisers increasingly expect the same precision and transparency in CTV as they do across the rest of their digital media buying,” said Jay Goebel, vice president of data partnerships at The Trade Desk. “By bringing Gracenote’s programming intelligence into The Trade Desk, advertisers can combine show-level context with the other signals available on our platform to make more informed buying decisions and gain greater visibility into where their ads appear. This integration gives advertisers another way to apply the data that matters to them, with greater choice and control across their CTV campaigns.”

The partnership represents a strategic expansion of Gracenote’s advertising business, building on the company’s established work with publishers and SSPs to bring show-level content intelligence into the demand-side workflow. Bringing these signals directly into The Trade Desk connects CTV inventory enrichment and packaging with campaign planning, activation and optimization.

To learn more about Gracenote content intelligence for CTV advertising, visit gracenote.com.

About Gracenote

Gracenote is the content intelligence business unit of Nielsen. We standardize the way the global media and entertainment ecosystem indexes content and associated metadata, allowing it to flow between creators, distributors, platforms and advertisers. By providing unmatched depth across 55M+ titles and 80K+ channels and catalogs, we power the modern search, discovery and navigation experiences that connect people to the TV, movies, music and sports they love—in 70+ languages across 80+ countries. For more information, visit gracenote.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

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SOURCE Gracenote