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CES 2020: Technology and Truth Will Shape the Future of Media

4 minute read | January 2020

CES, the world’s largest electronics and technology show, is where the entire tech ecosystem comes together—including those across the media industry. Each year at the event, C Space at the Aria gathers the world’s innovators, marketers and creatives in one venue to discuss the future of media and advertising. This year, Nielsen leaders joined the conversation to show how our data, insights and technology bring a shared truth to the industry. 

Data plays a key role in adding intelligence, context and truth to technology. This was a key trend throughout CES this year, and it’s one that’s particularly relevant for media. 

We kicked the week off by announcing the beta launch of our new Addressable TV Advertising Platform, which will help transform linear TV advertising from a mass marketing medium to one that’s much more targeted thanks to the wide adoption of smart TVs.  

“As programmers take on the challenge of unlocking the value of their 14 minutes per hour of advertising time, they require solutions to manage complex addressability workflows,” said Kelly Abcarian, General Manager, Advanced Video Advertising at Nielsen. 

To work across the fragmented media landscape, data and technology need to be open and flexible. We’ve designed the Nielsen Addressable TV Advertising Platform so it’s technology agnostic and can be integrated across all smart TV brands and into all existing broadcast infrastructures and agency workflows. 

We also announced the expansion of the global over the top (OTT) guide offerings for on-demand video streaming services from Gracenote, a Nielsen company. Leveraging the solution, OTT services are better able to elevate content visibility while enabling smart TV makers and cable and satellite operators to seamlessly integrate OTT content. And Gracenote’s deep descriptive metadata and Gracenote IDs provide common links between TV series, seasons and episodes, as well as related TV and movie genres, celebrities and other descriptive information for advanced content navigation, search and discovery experiences.

At the event, we showcased our new Addressable TV Advertising Platform and Gracenote’s global OTT offering, along with advance previews of some of our other leading-edge technologies, in the Nielsen Lounge. Through hands-on demonstrations for clients and industry leaders, we highlighted our unique portfolio of entertainment metadata and analytics. Attendees were able to visualize new ways to inform content investment decisions and create compelling search and discovery experiences to further engage audiences with the entertainment they love.

Technology is changing the way we connect with others. New innovations are creating different ways for audiences to consume content. Take linear TV, for example. The growing penetration of smart TVs is opening the doors to increasingly personalized content. During the event, Jason Bolles, SVP, Advanced Advertising, Nielsen, joined the “Transforming Contextual Advertising and Media” panel to discuss the rise of personalization in media and the role that data and analytics will play.  

To continue the conversations started at this year’s CES, we recorded a special series for our podcast, The Database, onsite. The first episode, “A Step Toward Widespread Addressable Ads on Linear TV,” features Kelly Abcarian and Dan Callahan, SVP of Data Strategy and Innovation at FOX, discussing what the beta release of Nielsen’s Addressable TV platform means for the industry, as well as what addressable advertising in the linear TV realm will look like.

As the industry navigates its greatest period of upheaval since the advent of television, the business of media needs the right data to determine what’s commanding attention today and what will resonate tomorrow. Nielsen’s unbiased, reliable data makes the entire industry possible by creating the indispensable, data-driven foundation that allows markets to function. And when we combine our data with the powerful technology driving the future of media, we help our clients unlock existing and new opportunities.