CTV’s data gap is holding back bigger ad budgets, new Gracenote research finds

86% of media planners would move more linear TV budget to CTV if they had show-level targeting and reporting — and 65% would also shift dollars from programmatic video, 63% from display

 NEW YORK, May 14, 2026 — Gracenote, the content intelligence business unit of Nielsen, today released a new report ahead of upfronts, “TV Audiences Have Shifted. Ad Dollars Have Not: The Need for Content Intelligence in the CTV Era.” The findings reveal that 86% of U.S. media planners would move more linear budget to CTV if show-level targeting and reporting were available.

The reallocation would not stop at traditional TV. Sixty-five percent say they would also consider shifting spend from programmatic video and 63% from display, suggesting richer content intelligence could help CTV win a greater share of digital ad spend across the broader media mix.

The report spotlights a major blind spot in connected TV: what Gracenote defines as the CTV data gap. While advertisers have embraced CTV’s audience targeting, the market still lacks a standardized view of the programming attributes behind each ad impression. Without that content layer, buyers lose confidence at every stage — from planning to post-campaign reporting. This uncertainty makes decision-makers hesitant to fund CTV at scale.

“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, Chief Business Officer at Gracenote. “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.”

The Gracenote Content Graph helps close this gap by giving advertisers a source-validated view of CTV inventory, including descriptors such as genre, rating and language, along with program-level metadata and unique content identifiers. This infrastructure enables more precise targeting, stronger brand safety controls and post-campaign proof of performance that buyers can trust.

A recent activation shows the value of this approach. In Q1 2026, a Dos Equis campaign executed by dentsu X through Index Exchange’s SSP used Gracenote CTV Content Intelligence to reach college football fans with precision. The solution delivered 100% of impressions within targeted college football content, including 84% during live College Football Playoff games, while keeping CPMs 7% under benchmark.

Additional findings from the report include:

• 89% of media planners anticipate shifting more budget from linear TV to CTV over the next 12 to 24 months, underscoring CTV’s continued momentum.
• 100% of programmatic traders say show-level transparency is very or extremely important for ensuring brand safety and inventory quality in CTV.
• 95% of programmatic traders agree that the absence of show-level signals prevents them from advocating for more CTV budget during planning.
• 80% of traders would shift budget from audience-targeted to contextually targeted CTV with actionable content signals.
• 47% of media planners cite limited show- or content-level data as a primary barrier to moving more spend into CTV.

Advertisers, agencies and media partners can download the full report here.

Methodology

The survey was fielded online March 5-23, 2026, among 500 U.S. media professionals from media agencies and brand advertisers. Respondents included media planners and strategists (n=206), linear TV buyers (n=213) and programmatic/digital video traders (n=81). Additional findings cited in this release are drawn from the complete survey dataset, available on request.

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 50M+ 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.

Media contact

Mark Yamada

mark.yamada@nielsen.com