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We frequently report on studies and data involving the connected television (CTV) advertising space, including white papers and surveys offered by Nielsen’s Gracenote. For this story, we examined a press release distributed by Gracenote this week and compared the bullet points with the survey itself, which is available here (registration required).
Connected television (CTV) platforms could draw more advertising dollars from traditional linear television channels and networks if media buyers had stronger access to show-level targeting and reporting signals.
That is the key takeaway from a new report released by Nielsen’s content metadata unit Gracenote this week, which found found 86 percent of U.S. media planners would shift more linear TV budget to connected TV if show-level targeting and reporting were available.
The report, called “TV Audiences Have Shifted. Ad Dollars Have Not: The Need for Content Intelligence in the CTV Era,” argues that advertisers are seeking greater transparency around the programming tied to CTV ad impressions.
The potential budget shift would not be limited to traditional television: Gracenote said 65 percent of media planners would consider reallocating spend from programmatic video to CTV if richer content intelligence were available, while 63 percent said the same about display advertising.
The findings of the report demonstrate what Gracenote refers to as the “CTV Data Gap,” a lack of standardized programming attributes attached to each ad impression in the connected TV marketplace. While advertisers have adopted CTV for audience targeting, Gracenote said buyers often lack a consistent view of show-level information that can support planning, brand safety and post-campaign reporting.
That absence of content-level transparency is limiting confidence in CTV as a larger-scale advertising channel, the company said. Gracenote found 47 percent of media planners cited limited show- or content-level data as a primary barrier to moving more spend into CTV.
“Buyers aren’t asking for more complexity — they’re asking for the same transparency they’ve relied on for decades in linear TV,” said Ryan Moore, the Chief Business Officer at Gracenote, said in a statement. “Bringing show-level visibility to CTV gives the channel a clearer path to bigger budgets, not just from linear but across the digital video ecosystem. When buyers have the insight to validate placement quality and prove impact, CTV becomes more accountable and competitive.”
Gracenote said its Content Graph is designed to address that gap by giving advertisers source-validated information about CTV inventory, including genre, rating, language, program-level metadata and unique content identifiers. The company said those signals can support more precise targeting, stronger brand safety controls and clearer post-campaign performance analysis.
The report also pointed to a recent campaign from beverage company Dos Equis as an example of how content intelligence can be applied in CTV: In the first quarter of 2026, Dentsu X used Gracenote CTV Content Intelligence through Index Exchange’s supply-side platform to target college football fans. The campaign delivered all impressions within targeted college football content, including 84 percent during live College Football Playoff games, while keeping CPMs 7 percent below benchmark, Gracenote affirmed.
Other findings showed broad demand for more CTV transparency among buyers: Gracenote said 89 percent of media planners expect to shift more budget from linear TV to CTV over the next 12 to 24 months. All programmatic traders surveyed said show-level transparency is very or extremely important for brand safety and inventory quality, while 95 percent said the lack of show-level signals prevents them from advocating for more CTV budget during planning.
Four out of five traders would shift budget from audience-targeted CTV to contextually-targeted CTV if actionable content signals were available, the report concludes.
The report is available to download by clicking or tapping here.
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