Nielsen Names Gracenote Chief Product Officer

Nielsen has appointed Bill Michels as the chief product officer of Gracenote, its content solutions business unit.

In his new role, Michels is responsible for leading Gracenote’s global product team as the company aims to grow its suite of video, sports and music products and accelerate key market expansion initiatives.

Michels brings two decades of product management, engineering and data partnerships experience across CTV, ad tech and search to the role. He has held senior leadership roles at companies such as Moloco, The Trade Desk, Foursquare/Factual and Yahoo.

“As Gracenote redefines the role of metadata in an AI world, it was important to bring in someone like Bill Michels, who has successfully built data businesses and platforms powered by machine learning,” said Jared Grusd, CEO of Gracenote. “Bill joins at a very exciting time for Gracenote and his adjacent experience will help the company think more horizontally and accelerate our growth initiatives.”

Michels said, “As someone who is passionate about data, the chance to create products powered by Gracenote’s unparalleled dataset—the industry’s most comprehensive and enriched—is truly exciting. I’m thrilled to join such a talented team and eager to bring my experience to the table as we drive Gracenote’s next evolution of growth.”