Set against the tranquil blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea and nestled among a dock of stately yachts that play host to industry luminaries, award-winning recording stars and plenty of rosé, you'll find a nautical beacon of knowledge on Liquid Sky, Cadent's yacht located in Cannes Harbor's berth N27.

Back in the first two decades of television's existence (the late 1940s to the late 1960s) cigarette makers were among the top advertisers, with one sponsor offering this tag line: "It's what's up front that counts."  For Cadent President of Sales Jim Tricarico, what counts most for this Upfront season is maximizing viewership of messages for a wider variety of advertisers.  That effort comes amid mounting challenges, though, including rating declines for many broadcast and cable TV networks, cutbacks in some network ad minutes and pods (especially in primetime) and growing audiences for content distributed through smart TV sets and TV-connected devices.

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.