Gracenote Entertainment Metadata Helps cineSearch’s Ava Chatbot Solve Significant Consumer Problem of Figuring out What to Watch

LOS ANGELES – APRIL 8, 2024 – Cineverse (NASDAQ: CNVS), an innovative streaming technology and entertainment company, continues to form strategic relationships that will help solve the industry’s content search and discovery issues. The company has today announced a deal with Gracenote, a Nielsen company, to integrate industry-leading metadata for millions of films and television shows into cineSearch – Cineverse’s AI-powered conversational entertainment search platform that is set to be unveiled this spring (visit cineSearch.com to join the waitlist).  

According to Nielsen’s State of Play report, American consumers, who have more than 2.7 million video titles to choose from, spend more than 10 minutes per session looking for what to watch, up 40% since 2019. In fact, 20% give up when they can’t easily find something to watch, causing a major issue for streamers looking to keep viewers engaged, creators whose stories are losing out on potential audiences, and of course, consumers, who want to be entertained, but end up frustrated rather than satisfied with their streaming experiences.  

Enter cineSearch and Ava. 

An innovative AI-powered platform, cineSearch’s goal is to revolutionize the search and discovery experience to answer audiences’ most pressing question: “What do you want to watch?” Through Ava, a chatbot with a unique, quirky persona, cineSearch offers a single unified search and recommendation engine with extensive support for dozens of traits such as mood, theme, tone, intensity, setting, keyword, plot, micro-genre, and many more.  

cineSearch will now leverage Gracenote’s comprehensive TV and movie datasets to expand its knowledge graph and deliver more personalized search results as well as provide up-to-date title availability and deep-links to content. Using cineSearch, a viewer who’s in the mood for a dark romantic comedy set in Australia can receive the most fitting content recommendations and be connected to those options across more than 60 major video streaming services for seamless viewing.  

Although Cineverse has an extensive library, Ava will recommend films and TV shows available anywhere – by leveraging Gracenote’s industry-leading metadata catalog – including complete title information such as synopsis, genre, cast, director and other product information – for a comprehensive and consistent content discovery experience.

“Our partnership with Gracenote increases the number of films and TV shows that are discoverable by users and allows us to offer cineSearch users the highest-quality title information with intensity rankings – when paired with a user’s viewing history, streaming service filters and content preferences – will help solve a major consumer issue and the leading cause of viewer frustration,” said Tony Huidor, CTO & COO of Cineverse. “With our previously announced partnership with Google Cloud in place and now with the participation of Gracenote in this endeavor, we are on course to unveil what we believe will be the most powerful search and discovery tool in streaming.”

As previously announced, the cineSearch service was developed by Cineverse using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Search. The underlying core cineSearch technology was built as an adaptive layer on top of Google’s Gemini large language models, using Google Cloud’s gen AI infrastructure to bring an innovative, conversational experience for those seeking advice on what to watch.

“AI-based personalization holds massive potential to improve streaming by helping individual viewers find and watch the content they’re most likely to love – from familiar hits to hidden gems,” said Trent Wheeler, Chief Product Officer at Gracenote. “Key to great technology is a broad understanding of the universe of content made possible by metadata. We’re pleased that Cineverse has tapped Gracenote’s entertainment data to power the cineSearch platform and look forward to seeing how Ava will revolutionize the search and discovery experience for content providers, creators and consumers alike.” 

Most importantly, cineSearch will have access to real-time metadata updates so that new titles will be discoverable the same day the titles premiere. Because Gracenote’s metadata catalog covers content in a wide number of foreign languages cineSearch has a clear path to international expansion and availability across multiple territories.

About Gracenote

Gracenote is the content data business unit of Nielsen, providing entertainment metadata, content IDs and related offerings to the world’s leading creators, distributors and platforms. Gracenote technology enables advanced content navigation and discovery capabilities helping individuals to easily connect to the TV shows, movies, music and sports they love while delivering powerful content analytics making complex business decisions simpler. 

About Cineverse

Cineverse’s advanced, proprietary technology drives the distribution of over 71,000 premium films, series, and podcasts to more than 82 million unique viewers monthly. From providing a complete streaming solution to some of the world’s most recognizable brands, to super-serving their own network of fan channels, Cineverse is powering the future of Entertainment. For more information, please visit www.cineverse.com. (NASDAQ: CNVS)

Press Contacts

For Cineverse:

For Gracenote:
Mark Yamada
mark.yamada@nielsen.com