Key Points:
- Gracenote launched its Video MCP Server to connect large language models with human-verified TV, movie and sports data for more accurate search and discovery.
- The product grounds AI responses in Gracenote’s database, adding imagery, availability and identifiers to improve viewer recommendations and tune-in.
- Gracenote says the launch is the first in a new suite of AI tools aimed at helping platforms boost engagement and monetization with reliable data.
Nielsen’s content data unit Gracenote has introduced a new product that aims to help TV platforms deliver improved search and discovery experiences by leveraging new artificial intelligence technology.
The product, called the Video Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, connects large language models (LLMs) to the company’s entertainment database, validating and enriching responses to queries in real time. By doing so, platforms can provide more accurate results when users search for programs or ask related questions.
Gracenote intends to roll out the Video MCP Server for connected TV (CTV) platform and streaming apps before making it more-broadly available. The tool dynamically links with any LLM, grounding results in the company’s data, which spans television, film and sports. It is designed to support conversational search, personalized recommendations and more-compelling discovery paths.
Examples provided by Gracenote included searching for episodes of Fox’s sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” where a character mentions the film “Die Hard,” ranking the highest-grossing Oscar-winning movies of the last decade or finding broadcast details for a live sports game.
The Video MCP Server supplements responses with program imagery, availability data and standardized content identifiers, which can connect viewers to reviews, trailers and ratings. Gracenote said this functionality allows platforms to harmonize data from multiple sources while delivering more useful and authoritative results.
“Gracenote content data and IDs have long served as the source of truth for the global entertainment industry,” said Tyler Bell, the Senior Vice President of Product at Gracenote. “With the launch of the Gracenote Video MCP Server, we’re introducing a new wave of offerings leveraging both our data and technology to help platforms solve big problems around engineering and harmonization. We look forward to helping our customers deliver elevated user experiences that position them for success against key engagement and monetization objectives in the AI age.”
Media platforms have increasingly looked to artificial intelligence for ways to enhance user engagement and boost monetization. Generative AI models, including LLMs, can assemble customized content catalogs and support semantic searches across wide-ranging datasets. But their limitations include generating inaccurate responses, a phenomenon known as “hallucination,” and being restricted to training data that may not be up to date.
Gracenote said its Video MCP Server addresses those challenges by anchoring queries to its continually updated, human-verified database. The launch marks the company’s first product in a new suite of AI tools focused on video, sports and music data.
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