Gracenote’s 2025 contextual advertising report, hot off the press, is not a neat bundle of fluffy survey results—far from it. Straight out of the gate, the Nielsen-owned metadata specialist goes for the jugular, declaring that increased ad spend has done little to improve the effectiveness of connected TV (CTV) advertising. Much of the buzz around CTV has long been overshadowed by the lingering dominance of traditional TV. Those days are now behind us, according to Gracenote, with time spent with CTV officially eclipsing traditional viewing in Q1 2025. Yet brands and agencies still haven’t capitalized on the brand-building opportunities in this space, distracted instead by the lure of addressable performance metrics in the living room. The nuances and challenges of…