Viewing Data From Gracenote Video Popularity Score Metric 'Fully Anonymized,' It Says

Smart TV viewership data collected by way of Gracenote automatic content recognition (ACR) is one of several signals that goes into the calculation of the company’s Video Popularity Score metric, emailed a Gracenote spokesperson Thursday to our question on data privacy. Gracenote announced Video Popularity Score Wednesday (see 1906190052) to help customers deliver discovery experiences where viewers are “connected to the movies and TV shows they want with the least amount of friction." Viewership is measured through a proprietary algorithm that analyzes consumption data covering linear TV, VOD and over-the-top from Nielsen Total Content Ratings, movie box office data from Gracenote and additional raw data from third-party sources, said the company. Awareness is calculated based on social media conversation measurement from Nielsen Social Content Ratings combined with engagement data from outside sources. The spokesperson told us viewing information is “fully anonymized and cannot be linked to Personally Identifiable Information. As with all ACR implementations on Smart TVs, users must opt in to privacy policies during the set-up process to enable the functionality,” he said. Users can activate or deactivate ACR “at any time,” he said.