Pixalate Aims to End CTV's 'Data Blackout' with New Analytics Platform

LONDON – June 17, 2026 – Ad fraud and compliance specialist Pixalate today launched a platform that promises to solve one of the most persistent and frustrating problems in modern advertising: the inability to see exactly where ads are running in the booming programmatic Connected TV (CTV) market. The new solution, OpenEPG™ 1.0 Analytics, is engineered to pierce the “structural data blackout” that has left both ad buyers and sellers in the dark, bringing the kind of granular, show-level transparency long standard in linear television to the fragmented digital world.

For years, as advertising budgets have migrated from traditional broadcast to streaming services, a profound information gap has widened. While advertisers pour billions into programmatic CTV, they often do so with a critical blind spot. They can target a specific app, but whether their ad runs during a prestige drama, a children’s cartoon, or a late-night talk show within that app has been largely a matter of guesswork. OpenEPG™ aims to eliminate that uncertainty by systematically mapping ad impressions to the specific television shows they run against, using only the data already present in the programmatic bidstream.

The Billion-Dollar Blind Spot

The shift from linear TV to CTV, which is expected to see continued budget growth in 2026, has been a boon for viewer choice and advertiser reach. However, it has also dismantled the clear, predictable programming environment that advertisers relied on for decades. In the open programmatic ecosystem—where ad inventory is bought and sold in real-time auctions—a systemic lack of transparency has become the norm.

“We are investing more in CTV than ever, but the accountability gap is immense,” commented a senior executive at a major media buying agency. “It’s like buying a Super Bowl ad and not knowing if it ran during the game or a pre-show panel. You’re paying a premium for the environment, but you can’t verify you’re actually in it.”

This “data blackout” has significant consequences. It undermines brand safety, making it difficult for advertisers to ensure their messages don’t appear alongside unsuitable content. It complicates performance measurement, as marketers can’t correlate campaign success with specific programming. And it creates friction between buyers and sellers, as premium inventory is difficult to verify and value properly. Legacy measurement firms, built for the static grids of linear TV, have struggled to keep pace with the dynamic, long-tail nature of Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) channels and aggregator apps.

Cracking the Code with Bidstream Data

Pixalate's OpenEPG™ confronts this challenge with a novel technical approach that sidesteps the primary bottleneck to transparency: the need for publisher cooperation. Historically, gaining show-level insight required publishers to voluntarily pass content metadata through the bidstream—a step many premium content owners are reluctant to take, preferring to guide buyers toward closed “clean room” environments.

OpenEPG™ bypasses this permission wall entirely. Its core innovation lies in the OpenEPG DB™, a proprietary database that independently maps the entire open-programmatic TV landscape. The platform ingests and organizes publicly available electronic program guide (EPG) data, creating a comprehensive schedule for 318 digital and FAST channels.

The process begins by tackling the messy world of Bundle IDs, the identifiers for CTV apps in the bidstream. OpenEPG DB™ normalizes over 37,000 different Bundle ID variations into clean, canonical app identities. From there, it uses the exact timestamp of an ad impression to cross-reference the channel’s schedule, resolving the specific show—and even the episode—that was airing at that precise moment. The result is a detailed, show-level record for every ad impression, covering 12,875 unique shows across all 210 U.S. media markets at launch.

This automated translation turns corrupted or non-standard data strings, which are often useless to programmatic platforms, into actionable intelligence for targeting and verification.

A New Power Dynamic for Buyers and Sellers

The implications of this newfound transparency are poised to ripple across the entire programmatic supply chain, creating new opportunities and expectations for both buyers and sellers.

For the buy-side—advertisers, agencies, and Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs)—OpenEPG™ offers a powerful new toolkit for control and optimization. Advertisers can now move beyond broad app-level targeting to execute pre-bid strategies at the show and genre level. A brand focused on family values, for instance, can finally ensure its ad for a minivan runs during 90 Day Fiancé but not during a more violent drama on the same TLC Go app. Post-campaign, analytics dashboards can reveal precisely which shows delivered the most impressions, consumer reach, and engagement, enabling far more sophisticated performance optimization.

Crucially, the platform also integrates show-level data for Invalid Traffic (IVT), leveraging Pixalate's Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for detecting sophisticated ad fraud. This allows advertisers to identify and avoid fraudulent activity concentrated within specific shows or dayparts.

On the sell-side, Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) and publishers gain equally valuable tools. “This transparency is a double-edged sword,” noted a programmatic lead at an SSP. “It forces us to be better, but it also gives us the tools to prove our value in a way we couldn’t before.”

Publishers can now use show-level data to defend their CPMs, demonstrating the premium context of their inventory with hard evidence. For aggregator apps that contain numerous channels, OpenEPG™ helps surface which individual shows are driving the most programmatic demand, allowing them to price that inventory accordingly. The ability to spot and mitigate IVT at a granular level also helps sellers protect their revenue and maintain buyer confidence.

Reshaping the Measurement Landscape

Pixalate’s approach represents a significant departure from the methods of many established measurement and verification players. While competitors like Integral Ad Science (IAS) and DoubleVerify offer robust solutions for fraud and brand safety in CTV, their ability to provide content-level data is often subject to publisher disclosure. Traditional measurement giants like Nielsen and Comscore are also adapting to the CTV boom, but their models have historically relied on panels and direct integrations.

OpenEPG™'s key differentiator is its independence. By deriving its insights directly from open-exchange signals and public data, it provides a scalable solution that covers the vast and often-overlooked long tail of programmatic CTV content without requiring custom data-sharing agreements. This positions it as a potentially disruptive force, shifting a degree of power to buyers by arming them with data that was previously inaccessible.

The platform’s reliance on bidstream data also aligns with the industry’s broader shift toward privacy-centric solutions. While the regulatory landscape around bidstream data is complex, it is generally composed of non-personally identifiable information. Given Pixalate's established focus on privacy compliance, the company appears well-positioned to navigate these considerations.

With the launch of OpenEPG™ and its public-facing OpenEPG™ Index—a monthly ranking of top shows by ad spend—Pixalate is not just offering a new tool; it is issuing a challenge to the entire CTV ecosystem to embrace a higher standard of transparency. The industry's response to this newfound visibility will be a key storyline to watch in the coming months.