From Automation to Aggregation: Cadent CEO Nick Troiano on the Novacap Acquisition and What Comes Next

TVREV Thought Leaders Circle member Cadent was acquired by Montreal-based private equity firm Novacap last week for $600 million. We spoke with Cadent’s CEO Nick Troiano about the acquisition, what it means for Cadent and where he sees the industry heading in years ahead.

ALAN WOLK (AW): Tell me a little bit about Novacap, the firm that’s acquiring Cadent. What’s their background in the media space?

NICK TROIANO (NT): Novacap is a Canadian-based investor with total assets under management of about 8 billion. They have different verticals, one of them being TMT— technology, media, and telecom. They have a strong understanding of infrastructure technology, like the QAM to IP transition for all carriers, and they see advertising as a transformative marketplace. They've been looking for platform opportunities to invest in, and their traditional MO is to find a platform company and grow it both organically and through acquisitions. They reached out to us and got to know us. They look at traditional TV as an opportunity, not necessarily as a purely legacy business, which is why they understand our converged strategy of TV plus CTV. They have a good acumen about acquisitions and are just great people with the right kind of DNA and thoughts.

AW: What are some of the things you're looking to try and accomplish post-acquisition? Short term, long term?

NT:  We've been working to create more automation within the technology ecosystem, not just for television but within CTV. We bought 4INFO in 2020, which brought us a DSP and an identity platform. We closed on EMX, a digital SSP, earlier this year. Our strategy has been to expand our tech stack and be an end-to-end provider. Our focus for the second half of 2023 will be on executing integration and unification strategies for our SSP, tying both to our demand side clients and our publisher clients. We pride ourselves on being converged TV with both TV and digital, and we think that modular approach is key.

AW:  How will the new organization be structured?

NT:  Even though it's an acquisition by Novacap, it doesn't really change much about Cadent’s business. They're increasing the strength of our financial backing, but it's not going to change operationally what we do day in and day out.

AW: Can you talk me through what the end-to-end solution you are envisioning might look like?

NT: It's about identifying your audience, planning against that audience across any supply source, executing based on pricing or performance or yield or return on ad spend, and then delivering unified reporting to prove that it works. We have our three pillars, our aggregation, automation, and attribution solutions, in place and we work with almost 100 data partners, multiple SSPs, and all the cleanrooms. Anything that we don't own within the stack, we integrate, so that we can provide an end-to-end solution, even if it's not our technology.

AW:  Who are Cadent’s clients? Agencies, brands, or both?

NT:  We have both: demand side clients, we partner with agencies, and we also work directly with clients. On the publisher side, we work with nearly 50 clients, licensing our technology, data marketplace, or audience platform to package up and deliver solutions to the marketplace on their behalf.

AW: Given that Novacap is based in Canada, are you looking to expand outside of the US?

NT: The bulk of our business is in the US or, more accurately, in North America, but international is an opportunity for us, perhaps in the next two to three years. We do have a presence in Canada, and Bell and Rogers are two big customers of ours there. But I think there's tremendous opportunities still in North America for us to capitalize on. Our expansion into Europe would be thoughtful and probably happen over the next 12 to 24 months.

AW: What are some key trends you see in the immediate future that you’re hoping to be able to capitalize on?

NT: The macro conditions are tough in 2023, but the diversification and flexibility of Cadent has allowed us to continue to grow. We're excited to have Novacap as new partners and about their enthusiasm to invest and grow the space. It's going to be an exciting second half for us, and we see the market moving towards more consolidation, and we're ready for it.