Gracenote and PubMatic score CTV play with data-driven live sports ad deal

MUMBAI: A new signal is entering the streaming ad race as data and live sports come together to make connected TV buying more precise.

Gracenote, the content intelligence arm of Nielsen, has partnered with PubMatic to integrate curated live sports and programme-level intelligence directly into programmatic connected TV (CTV) advertising workflows.

The collaboration aims to close what both companies describe as a persistent “content signal gap”, where advertisers often lack clarity on what content surrounds an impression before committing budgets. According to Gracenote research, 86 per cent of media planners say limited show-level data remains a barrier to shifting more spend from linear TV to CTV.

The integration embeds Gracenote’s episode-level data, contextual segments and live sports schedules into PubMatic’s platform, allowing buyers to align ad placements with specific programming and live events in real time. This enables curated deal IDs that connect impressions directly to identifiable content.

It also strengthens PubMatic’s AI-powered Live Sports Marketplace, using Gracenote schedule data to help advertisers target live games and premium sporting moments as they air. The system is designed to work at bidstream speed, adding minimal latency while supporting real-time decisioning.

The implementation is built on the IAB Tech Lab’s Agentic Real-Time Framework, designed for fast and containerised data exchange in programmatic advertising.

Speaking on the partnership, Gracenote vice president of product partnerships Jake Richardson said, “Marketers are paying more for CTV impressions and want to know their ads are running during familiar content they can verify. What’s made this difficult is the need for the data to work at the speed of the bidstream to inform what gets packaged and bought. Now, with PubMatic, our contextual segments and live sports schedules operate at that critical decision point.”

Adding perspective, PubMatic vice president of CTV and online video Nicole Scaglione said, “Live sports is the most premium inventory in the industry. What Gracenote brings to our platform is the verified content intelligence that powers impression-level decisioning to be more precise and more measurable, so buyers get the performance without sacrificing transparency.”

The partnership signals a broader push to make premium streaming inventory more transparent, measurable and programmable, especially as live sports continues to drive the most valuable attention in connected TV advertising.