How It Started
When we first entered the ad tech space, we had a familiar business plan: build technology that would disrupt agencies and win their clients directly. But something unexpected happened along the way…
“We quickly realized we weren’t the experts in these industries,” explains Carson Henry, CEO @ [cognition]. “The agencies already had the relationships and domain knowledge we’d take years to build.”
So we flipped the model completely.
Instead of competing with agencies, we decided to enable them with tools and technology that would enable them to build an owned & operated stack and to truly become their clients’ source of truth for all things programmatic and all things streaming TV.
In Episode 001 of [radically candid], Carson Henry shares this journey and how the partnership approach ultimately is accelerating the solution for one of advertising’s biggest challenges: accurate attribution for streaming TV campaigns.
🔍 The Big Insight: Collaboration > Competition
Most ad tech platforms position themselves as standalone solutions that sideline agencies as middlemen. This is a story about how we found a more collaborative approach: turning competitors into strategic partners.
“Where we were trying to dethrone them originally, now we were partnering with and aligning with them, and that was just a much better, easier path for everyone.” – Carson Henry
This fundamental insight—that collaboration amplifies value more than competition in today’s networked ecosystem—has profound implications for how we think about technology partnerships.
💡 3 Game-Changing Capabilities Born From This Approach
- The “30% Attribution Correction” Carson talks about how as much as 30% of search traffic should actually be attributed to streaming TV campaigns according to recent studies. The research reveals how when someone sees a TV ad and then searches for the brand, traditional attribution gives all credit to the search. Read more about it here.
- Real-Time Creative Management Ready for real-time, data-driven, personalized video and display ads? How about an end-to-end creative suite connected to one of the few Amazon-approved ad servers in the world? Say goodbye to bottlenecks and hello to performance.
- Custom Inventory Deals Without Minimums Learn about the FreeWheel partnership that enables agencies to curate custom streaming TV deals across premium publishers like Disney+, Hulu, and Roku without meeting the usual $3M+ minimums these platforms require.
🤔 Why This Matters For All Marketing Leaders
Even if you’re not directly involved in streaming TV advertising, the principles at work here apply across marketing technology:
- The “Expert Tax” Is Real: Building expertise in a specialized domain takes years. Partnering with existing experts creates immediate value rather than duplicating effort.
- Attribution Is Still Broken: If 30% of search traffic is actually driven by video in automotive, what hidden attribution patterns exist in your industry?
- Technology Should Empower, Not Replace: The most effective tech solutions enhance human expertise rather than attempting to automate it away.
👀 But Don’t Take My Word For It…
There’s so much more in the full conversation that I couldn’t fit into this newsletter like:
- Why TradeDesk UID 2.0 can’t match Amazon ID
- How agencies leverage [cognition] to win new biz and defend spend
- New verticals where this approach works even better
Listen to the Full Episode Now →
I’d love to hear your thoughts after you’ve listened.
What aspects of this approach could you apply in your own partnerships?
Talk soon,
Tim Rowe, Storytelling @ [cognition]
