Gracenote Resolves Viewer Frustration Around Where, When and How to Watch Streaming Programming

Gracenote Program Availability Data helps viewers find and watch the streaming TV, movies and live sports content they want across all services

Gracenote, a Nielsen company, is helping TV providers optimize their user experiences by providing the most accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive datasets covering subscription video on-demand (SVOD) and linear (FAST) content availability. The Gracenote solutions pair TV, movie and sports programming availability data with normalized program metadata to ensure that streaming aggregators, digital platforms and MVPDs offer content-first user experiences that facilitate universal search, discovery and tune-in capabilities to drive maximum audience engagement.

According to Nielsen’s State of Play report, 20% of consumers say they abandon a viewing session when they can’t find something compelling to watch. With content frequently moving between providers, a blockbuster movie that is available on a VOD platform one day could be gone the next. Different streaming services may feature different seasons or individual episodes of a popular TV show hampering seamless viewing experiences. Accelerating fragmentation among live sports rights makes finding a single game difficult and following a team throughout a full season nearly impossible.

While the streaming age has brought compelling content and on-demand access to consumers, it has also brought frustration among viewers unable to find what they’re looking for. To address the fragmented viewing experience, Gracenote has launched three primary offerings in its Availability solution that can help video providers put compelling content first and solve common “where, when and how to watch” as well as “take me to watch” use cases.

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Together, these offerings enable customers to address consumer pain points, deliver improved user experiences and drive better monetization:

• 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 / 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

“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 a long history of powering the user experiences of the world’s biggest and most innovative TV providers since 1965. The company’s industry-leading program metadata, imagery and ID offerings which have been integral to linear EPGs are now fueling the next generation of streaming service UIs and CTV home screens that seamlessly connect viewers to the content they’re most interested in. As the entertainment industry continues its evolution, Gracenote is transforming its offerings in step to ensure customers can effectively leverage programming to maximize engagement and monetization.

Gracenote is the content solutions business unit of Nielsen, providing entertainment metadata, content IDs and related offerings to the world’s leading creators, distributors and platforms. Gracenote technology enables advanced content navigation and discovery capabilities helping individuals to easily connect to the TV shows, movies, music and sports they love while delivering powerful content analytics making complex business decisions simpler.

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