• by Wayne Friedman , Today

Cadent, a TV/video-focused advertising-technology company, has acquired certified YouTube measurement company VuePlanner. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

VuePlanner specializes in optimizing ad spend and contextual targeting for YouTube, and is one of many verified third-party "YouTube Measurement Program" companies for brand suitability, safety, and content insights.

Other YouTube Measurement Program companies include Pixability, Zefr, Tubular Labs, Wizdeo, Channel Factory, Sightly, Integral Ad Science (IAS), and DoubleVerify.

Giant Media launched VuePlanner as a pre-buy planning tool for YouTube advertising in 2018 to help brands and agencies with brand suitability and contextual targeting for their video campaigns.

John Cobb, chief executive officer of Giant Media and CEO/co-founder of VuePlanner, will join the company as executive vice president/general manager of Cadent VuePlanner. All VuePlanner employees will be integrated into Cadent’s operations.

The YouTube Measurement Program launched in 2016 to standardize how third parties use data from YouTube’s API data to serve their clients and ensure its accuracy. All participants must undergo an audit and recertification process quarterly.

Cadent says VuePlanner can help it give brands better access to high-value video inventory when it comes to targeting segmented audiences "across any unique format — with a single, end-to-end platform, including linear, CTV and YouTube."

Content creators and influencers are a key and growing part of the digital media spectrum for social media and other video platforms, including YouTube.

VuePlanner uses a blend of AI and curators to improve brands' YouTube campaign performance for content identification, quality scoring, advanced predictive targeting, and pre-bid transparency.

YouTube continues to soar in overall TV-streaming viewership share, according to Nielsen.

YouTube now has a leading 12.9% share of total TV/streaming viewing as of the Nielsen October index. Over 62% of U.S. internet users use YouTube at some time on a daily basis.

Cadent has a unified platform that integrates audience data, advertising activation, and publisher connections for campaign management.

For predictive advertising, it has over 22,000 artificial intelligence-driven planning models that offer outcomes on all video platforms that consumers use.