What do you do when you’re the “800-pound gorilla” aggregating advertising inventory from some 200 MVPD partners? In the case of Cadent, you extend your reach to local television broadcasters to become a one-stop shop.
As advertisers increasingly seek better audience targeting and efficiency, “The marketplace has kind of come our way,” says the company’s President of Advertising Sales, Jim Tricarico.
Less than five years ago, Cadent was “a DR product,” Tricarico explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cadent & one2one Media UpFront event in Manhattan. “It was a way for people to get inexpensive GRP’s. But we knew that in order to evolve, we had to create a network-like solution.”
That solution is used by a host of premium brands, including Amazon, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal and Procter & Gamble.
Tricarico says Cadent can access network inventory for advertisers at a 30% to 50% discount from direct-network buys. “We’re never out there saying we’re better than network, we’re instead of network. We really just want to be a complement to network and solve some of those problems that are going on in the marketplace.”
Cadent has access to inventory on all networks and such major sporting events as the Olympics and NCAA tournaments.
A TV veteran whose background includes stints at MTV Networks, Viacom and Screenvision, Tricarico smiles while noting that some people talk about data as though it never existed before. “Every plan has data behind it. The question now is how deep is that data that they’re using,” he says.
Noting that Cadent eschews “walled gardens,” Tricarico says the company does what data tells it to do.
“Whereas when you go to a network group, they actually optimize to their portfolio because they don’t have access to every network. We buy directly against the data and optimize to the data and not to the portfolio.”
In addition to its own data, Cadent has partnerships with companies like 605, which has access to Charter Communications’ 10 million set-top boxes, and with Adobe and Videology. Cadent can cross-reference advertisers’ data with that of 605, “or we become more of an execution arm where we work with the Adobes and the Videologys of the world to execute on the fact that they’ve already put data over their plans and they use us as the inventory source.”
To broaden its footprint on the local broadcast side, Cadent has spent the past year hiring an internal buying group and now has relationships with more than 600 local TV stations, according to Tricarico.
“People are so desperate to find efficient GRP’s that even in cable there’s not enough reach to find them all. What’s growing so much right now is both news and syndication on the broadcast side.”
This video was produced at the Cadent & one2one Media UpFront 2018 industry summit. You can find more videos from the series here. The sponsors for this series are Cadent and one2one Media.
