Don’t Overlook Easy: Cadent’s Yi Says Identity Starts At Home

SANTA MONICA — You could build complex infrastructure to correlate your CTV ad consumption back to households.

Or you could start with an identity system that starts with households at the core.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Cadent’s Tony Yi urges executives not to overlook the straightforward option.

House in order

Cadent provides software platforms for connecting buyers and sellers of addressable TV advertising.

In 2020, it acquired 4INFO, an identity graph vendor whose spine was constructed largely around a concept of household identities. On top of that, Yi says Cadent aggregates fragmented supply and platform data – something he claims makes Cadent’s identity graph 50% more accurate than rivals’.

“The large majority, if not all of them, are cookie-based or mobile device-based,” he says. We’ve always been geo-based, house-based.

“We roll up a variety of different, KPIs and data assets to that, including hashed email, IP address, lat-long(itude), et cetera.”

Start at optimal

Having that core data, Yi says, allows customers to stick to simple.

“Everyone talks about measurement and fragmentation and how to solve for these things in complex ways,” he says.

“The easiest way is to start out with the most accurate (identity) spine that you can have and everything else is just gravy on top of that.

“Don’t overlook the easy step. Challenge your data people to give you the test results to understand why you could be losing 30, 40, 50% without even getting started.

“Why don’t we start out with an optimal starting point and then build the sophistication on top of that to move the whole industry forward? Starting out with two hands high behind your back is not a way to win a race in my mind.”