Ad tech M&A has been in the doldrums since late 2021, but things may be looking up.
A week after DoubleVerify acquired Scibids for $125 million, advanced TV advertising company Cadent changed hands from one private equity firm (Lee Equity Partners) to another (Novacap).
Now that Novacap has scooped up Cadent for a cool $600 million in one of the biggest ad tech deals of 2023, Cadent is gearing up to go omnichannel. Namely, it’s branching out from its historical linear and streaming TV niche to channels such as display, social, audio and out-of-home.
These growth goals mean Cadent will likely be eyeing acquisitions bankrolled by its new parent.
“Even more M&A will probably be coming at some point,” says AdExchanger Associate Editor Alyssa Boyle on this week’s episode of The Big Story. “It’s a matter of when and not if.”
In fact, Cadent has already started realizing its ambitions. In May, it bought EMX’s SSP tech two months after EMX and parent company Big Village went bankrupt. In the process, Cadent gained digital display capabilities and inventory access.
Programmatic display ad spend is projected to reach roughly $142 billion this year, according to Statista, “which is more than CTV, digital out-of-home and audio put together,” says AdExchanger Associate Editor Anthony Vargas. “Try telling your new private equity owners that’s a market worth ignoring.”
In the second part of this episode, we turn to National CineMedia (NCM), which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April. To help rebuild its business, the beleaguered company will begin selling movie screen inventory programmatically in Q4 to attract new digital advertisers.
NCM’s pitch to advertisers centers on the ability to get attention from a captive audience. Research from eye-tracking tech company Lumen shows that 97% of moviegoing audiences are looking at the screen when ads play before the trailers. Just 35% of TV viewers pay attention to commercials.
In NCM’s view, its programmatic movie inventory is “premium video” (if it does say so itself).
Premium video is one of the industry’s favorite catchall terms, Alyssa says, because it sounds desirable and doesn’t quite fall into the CTV or OOH category.
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NCM’s in-cinema inventory will be available through programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace deals and on the open exchange.
Here’s a question: When inventory is bucketed as “premium,” do advertisers know exactly what they’re buying?
