Comcast Seeks to Harness Trove of TV Data

Comcast is sitting on a potential treasure trove of data on how Americans watch TV. Now, the cable giant is working to unlock that information in ways that it hopes could save the $70 billion US television advertising market.

Comcast is seeking to harness viewing data from the set-top boxes and streaming apps used by its millions of cable-TV subscribers to create products it can license to other companies, according to people familiar with its plans. That will require organizing a vast pool of details into “dashboards” that TV networks and marketers can use to tap specific slices of data. Comcast is in talks with audience-measurement firms and television networks, including Walt Disney’s ESPN, Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting and Discovery Communications, about licensing its data to them. It already has a deal with its own NBCUniversal unit and at least one other media company, said people familiar with the deals.