Welcome To The Business Of Data With Jon Lafayette
In the Business of Data, we focus on what data tells us about our world and how it is being used in media, advertising and other business.
Like gold or oil before it, data is valuable and drives an increasingly digital economy. In the Business of Data, we focus on what data tells us about our world and how it is being used in media, advertising and other business. We hope you read, enjoy, learn and share. Thank you.
ShowSeeker Simplifies Access to Daily Viewership and First-Party Data in its Pilot Order Management System
Pilot will be among the first software providers ingesting Comscore’s Persons Pulse data
The amount of data sloshing over the advertising business is enough to make anyone’s head spin. Media buyers and sellers both need to be able to organize, analyze and utilize information about audiences to help marketers reach the viewers most likely to buy their products.
“The business we’re in is the powerful simplification of data,” said Kevin Dang, Director of Research and Insights at ad-tech company ShowSeeker, offering a solution.
ShowSeeker is owned by Charter Communications’ Spectrum Reach ad sales unit.
“I think data today can be extremely complicated and fragmented,” Dang told The Measure. “We want it to be compelling, accessible and, most importantly, relatable.”
In addition to managing inventory, the advanced cloud technology behind ShowSeeker’s Pilot order management system allows it to ingest and organize a torrent of data from multiple sources. That’s important because Pilot is adding a lot of new data that its clients will be able to take advantage of—from daily info about campaign viewership to first-party data from its cable-operator partners.
[READ MORE]
FAST Facts: Gracenote Sees 1,850 Channels with 197,000 Shows, Movies and Sports Programs
Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) channels are expanding, well, very fast.
Gracenote, the Nielsen unit that compiles data about content, has added information about FAST channels to its Data Hub, which previously tracked the programming available on the biggest subscription video-on-demand streaming services.
The additional data provides a more holistic view of the streaming landscape, Gracenote said.
According to Gracenote’s Data Hub, in the third quarter of 2025 there were 1,850 active FAST channels, an increase of 14% from Q1 2o25 and a 76% jump since 2023. [READ MORE]
Magnite Leaps Into Providing Pause Ads Programmatically
Programmatic isn’t just for remnant spots and dots any more.
Magnite said that those pause ads you’ve heard so much about are now available on its sell-side platform.
Pause ads are activated when a viewer watching a show presses the pause button. Instead of a frozen screen an ad pops up. In the best-case scenario, the ad is relevant to what the viewer was watching. In many cases, the ads offer a bit of a joke about the viewer running to the kitchen or bathroom, just to show a sense of situational awareness.
Viewers seem to like pause ads because they don’t interrupt the shows they’re watching. Also studies have shown that pause ads are effective for marketers. According to DirecTV’s internal metrics, on average, pause ads drove 34% higher unaided ad recall compared to traditional addressable advertising and 6% more incremental reach when paired with addressable.[Read More]
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