Navigating the New TV Landscape

The advertising industry’s fascination with addressable advertising has been around for years. Finally, the industry is taking notice and moving forward, and this movement is only going to accelerate.

Thanks to technological advances, there has been concrete progress toward the next generation of finding audiences and buying media. That’s good news for marketers because video is arguably the best and strongest vehicle for getting a message out to consumers, across any device. Reaching the right customer is everything.

The market is fragmented and confusing right now. We have all witnessed broadcast and network ratings declining and pricing going up for ads in those mediums. Consumers are viewing content across multiple screens and devices, using over the top services, and relying on VOD and DVR content.

As CTO and COO of Cadent, I keep a wide-angle view of the ad-buying landscape. Cohesion and organization are possible—we must make the decision to move in this direction as an industry.

Our platform technology focuses on removing friction from buying television, which traditionally lacks the seamless tools of digital marketing. So even when it’s complicated to execute, we meet the challenge by auditing processes, maintaining integrations with inventory partners, and clear reporting.

Cadent’s vision has long been to enable our clients to convey their message in an addressable way, whether they’re inventory owners, content owners, advertisers, or brands. We’re strongly committed to bringing new technology and new companies into our portfolio to meet the challenge of using data and automation to achieve addressability across all platforms.

The industry wants to take things even further by bringing digital elements to video platforms, including workflow, data attribution, and reporting. There are challenges ahead, with so much information available through set-top box data, cookie collection, and cross-device identification on mobile, the currency has to shift to something more relevant to modern marketers—something tied more closely to business impact, so brands can measure the results of campaigns and relate them to actual sales and transactions.

The Next Generation of TV

We’re seeing a lot of companies using data in ways that haven’t been used before. This is a transformative time. Audience-based, addressable advertising is pushing the industry forward, and once the currency normalizes, a marketer will be able to find an audience wherever they are. New technology is already starting to automate and change the way we do business, and big data and analytics tools are helping free marketers and content creators from manual processes and the Excel sheets of yesterday so they can focus on what really matters.

In the age of digital, change is the only constant. That’s why it’s so important that the TV business doesn’t just evolve to meet current challenges; we have to actively anticipate and build for the challenges of tomorrow.

Cadent is uniquely positioned because of our deep industry roots and wealth of experience. We simplify the industry for clients with a remarkable degree of transparency, so marketers can easily see the effectiveness of spend and measure ROI. We’re constantly looking at new ways to innovate and apply data, and we’re leveraging digital methods to make TV seamless to buy and execute, and most importantly, prove business impact and ROI.