Beyond the Genre: Bill Condon on Gracenote’s Vision for CTV Transparency

AdTechGod (0:00)

Welcome to the AdTechGod Pod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, AdTechGod.

AdTechGod (0:13)

Welcome to another episode of the AdTechGod Pod, where I speak to the revenue leaders of our industry. Today, I have Bill Condon. He's the head of global advertising sales at Gracenote, which is Nielsen's content data business, and someone who's really been at the front row of evolution of television advertising overall. He's worked across traditional TV, digital, programmatic, and now CTV, which makes him particularly interesting to me, especially with all the changes that we've seen and connected television over the past few years. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about what buyers actually know about the content that they're buying in CTV, and why something is basic as knowing the show is more difficult than you would think.

I'm really excited to chat with Bill again today. This is the second time on the show, so Bill, welcome to the show, and thank you for sponsoring this episode.

Bill Condon (1:01)

Thank you for having me. I've heard this cliched line in another podcast, but it's great to be a returning champion to AdTechGodPod.

AdTechGod (1:08)

I can tell you the episode you and I did together probably ranked top two, Bill.

I know. I'm just trying to flatter you. My wife is going to be like, how does it feel to live with a superstar? That's what you should ask.

Bill, thank you. We usually run through background, but we have that. We chatted shortly after your time at Zumo. You spent quite some time there. You understand the industry so well. What have you been doing since then, and what brought you to Gracenote?

Bill Condon (1:37)

Yeah, it's a great question. I had some time. I spent some time with my kids. I had a few months off in between.

Listen, the opportunity at Gracenote, I think, really leads into the exciting things that the industry is going through, the transformation, the convergence.

You and I talked extensively when I was looking for something, and I thought around like, listen, there are things that I don't want to do, and there's things that I want to do. This idea of going in and building and growing something, and the graceful opportunity was extremely interesting. Being part of Nielsen, but being a startup group or division, that was very compelling. I don't think there's a ton of differentiated opportunities that I saw in regards to what I was looking to do. And Gracenote has been around for quite some time, sort of the leaders in the metadata content discovery space. And like, if you go back, well, like, think back to the day, AdTechGod, did you ever burn a CD back in the day?

AdTechGod (2:54)

Yes, I actually did. Yeah.

Bill Condon (2:56)

So, you know, nothing to do with my business, but that was the Gracenote database. Kind of started at a footprint in audio and then expanded into television. And by television, I mean streaming as well as linear. But back to the point of differentiation and the convergence of connected television, I think back to my Zumo days, I was talking about, look, listen, this is free TV and it's streaming. And that's only grown on the fast side. But more importantly, you think about what Disney is doing, what Netflix is doing, this idea of becoming a new TV. There are ads and commercials and consumers want value with that. I'd say there's also challenges and challenges in the market around. Okay, like it's 2026

And once again, I kind of go back to that 1980s PSA.

It's 10 PM, do you know where your children are? And you compare that to you're a media buyer or you're a client. Do you know where your ads are running? What are they running against? And the fact that I think we look at this sometimes and be like, how can this happen? This is digital and it's the promise of digital. I think that what we need to realize is connected television and this convergence, we're still kind of in our infancy, right? It's been around for a bit. Smart TV is now it's connected TV.

So we're still sort of working off of, you know, old protocols, right? You've got OpenRTB was built for web and for app.

So doesn't really necessarily lean on or look at the idea of content. It's more focused on prioritizing app bundle and device ID.

AdTechGod (4:56)

Which is kind of crazy Bill, considering like the promised land was this is digital now. And like imagine how much we can get from this and the targeting and the measurement and the details of where you're at served. And it felt like it was, hey, you're running on this channel. And you're like, great, but what show was playing? And the details were very minimal.