The Art and Science of Going Holistic in Addressable Advertising. An Interview with Cadent’s Rachel Herbstman

A lot has happened at Cadent over the past few months. For one thing, since our last discussion in April, Rachel Herbstman has been promoted to VP, Platform Analytics, Cadent Addressable from Director. For another thing, Cadent’s Addressable Platform has expanded and improved its capabilities. 

Adding Data Science and Automation to the Art of Media

Herbstman’s team has expanded over the past few months and includes experts in Data Science and Computer Science who partner with those with media backgrounds. “It’s a really great complementary approach and allows us to look at campaign analytics with different perspectives,” she explained and allows Cadent to “automate efficiencies and increase our overall productivity within the group.”

Perhaps the biggest change is the degree and type of automation that, in her words, informs the platform. According to Herbstman, “We can look at any visualization that slices and dices the data we receive, and because we are getting the data from the whole industry versus just one particular system or one particular type of media, we can learn a lot,” about the difference in advertising impact in different environments from VOD to Linear to OTT and across types of audiences. It is looking at data holistically to, “understand the actionable takeaways from all of the different dimensions.” Then, once the individual campaigns are analyzed, use this knowledge to help inform the entire category.

Cadent’s platform is an open ecosystem that can use, “any data set from any service. So if a client wants to use their own data, they can ingest that. If a client is more interested in prospecting, we can use their first party with any third party data and compare the difference between the two.” In this way an advertiser can ascertain the differences in audience behavior by platform.

How the Landscape Has Changed

Because Cadent is taking a holistic approach to addressable, they have a good view of the trends occurring in the media landscape and how different media types and messages resonate with different audiences by platform.  “So for instance, in a VOD environment, we may need less frequency to drive a conversion because the consumer is in an engaged, lean in, consuming media differently than watching a linear television show,” she explained. Being able to look at different cuts of data by audience, viewing environment, by creative length, is a great advantage and can lead to new insights into engagement and ad weight.

Reach is another area where having different datasets is valuable. There may be opportunities to add messaging later in a campaign to improve reach. According to Herbstman, “Maybe we layer on more messages in weeks four or five of a campaign when reach has plateaued so you can get new eyeballs and new impressions and pay less for that incremental consumer.”

Predicting Business Outcomes

Herbstman noted that one of the major efforts over the past few months has been the implementation of synergies within the company. “The analytics group has been working closely with the Products group and the Data Engineering teams and the Data Science teams,” she stated. This enables the company to leverage all of their historical data that has been received on a campaign by campaign basis to better understand the trends and form models to better predict future business outcomes. These models could also take into account things like seasonality and pod lengths.

“Our platform embraces the very best of all of the marketing tools,” Herbstman noted. “What we are able to do is understand, from a digital and a television perspective, how audiences are engaging in and consuming content. So from the onset of a campaign, instead of looking at addressability as a standalone tactic, we are talking to the agencies and advertisers to understand what their holistic campaign parameters are and how they are using other media tactics.” Holistic approaches are the wave of the future and Cadent is dedicated to being a frontrunner in that effort.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Cadent's Rachel Herbstman on Using Data to Make Addressable TV Smarter

Rachel Herbstman always had an interest in advertising and psychology and discovering, as she explained, "why people make the decisions that they make and how brand packaging and commercials impact decisions."  Her first job out of college was in performance-based buying at a DR agency, "focusing on performance-based KPIs, as well as branding and efficiency," and then on to Modi Media, a division of GroupM.  "It was one of the only agencies that had a centralized unit for advanced TV," she noted.  In her current role as Senior Director of Platform Analytics at Cadent, she is able to fully explore her interest in consumer behaviors through the use of granular data. 

Using Data to Bridge Linear and Addressable Television

Data and its use in the media industry have changed since Herbstman's DR days.  "Data used to mean more survey-based research," she explained. "Now, we are working with actionable data on television.  There are many data sets representing actual behavior that can be leveraged and then measured by real business outcomes."  Cadent is taking major steps to maximize the value of this data for advertisers; the Cadent Advanced TV Platform unifies linear and addressable campaign reporting to offer a transparent understanding of what worked and didn't work in their campaigns. 

"Marketers are looking for meaningful and actionable results, but typically, they don't get unified post-campaign analytics when they execute with a few providers," Herbstman said.  "[With Cadent's solutions across advanced and linear TV] we begin by asking the client, 'What are your primary objectives?  How are you measuring success?'  This can range from a brand health study or web traffic measurement to a first-party sales analysis from an addressable or linear perspective.  It depends on what the client is looking to achieve.  They can see it all from our platform in one clean snapshot."

Keeping Up and Standardizing Results

"The landscape is changing daily" with new data sets and new supply sources in the mix, Herbstman asserted.  Cadent's challenge is keeping up with the changing ecosystem.  "On our end, standardizing and aggregating the measurement across multiple systems is most important," she said.  "We are in constant communication with both the data vendors and the supply side partners to be sure that everything we can unify, we do." Depending on the client's key objectives, they now have visualizations that help them home in on the key campaign outcomes.  This eliminates the clutter, making data easy to digest, interpret and actionable for clients.

Creating commonality from the platform's output offers great addressable benefits.  "Post-campaign analytics fuel insights that inform future linear and addressable campaigns," Herbstman explained.
 

"Marketers get a full picture of their campaigns, including which networks perform best and at what point the campaign frequency reaches diminishing return," she continued.  "With standardized scripts, we can clearly interpret results and make strategic recommendations for future addressable campaigns and/or other media tactics the advertiser may be executing."

Tracking results is a big part of Cadent's philosophy, and working closely with the advertiser is an important component of the relationship.  "We want to make sure that from a measurement perspective we are tying it all together and can prove or disprove the initial investment," Herbstman explained.  "From the initial conversations surrounding the campaign test design, it's our job to provide consultative support.  Then, post-campaign, once the client understands the value in addressable analytics and sees the return on their investment, they're generally more confident in the next campaign.  Once that first campaign is complete, we use the results to optimize better for the next campaign."  Data from thousands of campaigns across all categories is stored and then used in scientific planning algorithms to enable the smartest strategic recommendations in the Cadent Platform.

Applying Results to Future Campaigns

The granularity of the data enables Cadent to drill down and better understand variances between targeted audience segments.  Being transparent is a vital component of the relationship.  Advertisers can understand every single part of the puzzle and how the addressable campaign varies from linear, VOD or IP-connected, for example, and understand the differences between the platforms and how to best use them in aggregate based on the category, strategic segment and KPI, Herbstman noted.

"Ultimately, standardized addressable reporting will lead to a more transparent TV ecosystem and better ROI for marketers," she concluded.  "Our goal is to provide an easily digestible analytics visualization tool that clearly narrates the campaign's performance -- wins and losses -- while understanding the integrity of the data and potential areas to optimize future campaigns."

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com