ShowSeeker and Innovar Merge in Spectrum Reach's Ad Tech Power Play

NEW YORK, NY – January 05, 2026 – Ad tech platform ShowSeeker announced today it has combined with operational improvement firm Innovar Solutions, a strategic move that signals a significant consolidation in the media advertising landscape. The unified company will operate under the ShowSeeker name and aims to deliver a comprehensive, end-to-end ad sales management platform for an industry grappling with the complexities of linear and digital convergence.

This combination comes just a year after ShowSeeker, known for its cloud-based Pilot® order management system, was acquired by Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales arm of cable giant Charter Communications. The move unites ShowSeeker's robust software infrastructure with Innovar's deep expertise in redesigning media workflows, creating a powerful entity poised to tackle long-standing inefficiencies in the ad sales process.

"There has been a natural alignment in the work ShowSeeker and Innovar have been doing for years," said Dave Hardy, Vice President and General Manager of ShowSeeker. "Both companies have curated value to the industry and put forth purpose-built systems. Now, as one, we can further expand, modernize, and deploy smarter solutions that make work much easier for our clients."

A Strategic Consolidation in Converged TV

The merger is more than a simple combination of two companies; it represents a calculated step in Spectrum Reach's broader strategy to build a dominant ad tech stack. By acquiring ShowSeeker in 2025 and now folding in Innovar's process-oriented prowess, Charter Communications is assembling the components for a vertically integrated solution that offers greater control and efficiency across the converged TV ecosystem.

This strategy positions the new ShowSeeker to compete more aggressively with established ad tech players like Mediaocean, Operative, and FreeWheel. While these competitors offer powerful platforms, ShowSeeker's direct backing by a media heavyweight like Spectrum Reach—with its access to over 30 million U.S. households and proprietary first-party data—provides a distinct competitive advantage. The integration aligns with Spectrum Reach's recent launch of AI-driven tools like "Spectrum Reach Architect," which leverages first-party data to optimize media planning. This combination is a clear effort to build an ecosystem that not only automates sales but also infuses them with powerful data intelligence from the ground up.

ShowSeeker already holds a formidable position in the cable TV industry. Its Pilot platform has been instrumental in generating over 385,000 client proposals in a single year, leading to nearly 327,000 executed orders valued at approximately $2.6 billion in gross sales. With this merger, the company is set to expand its influence from its stronghold in linear cable to the rapidly growing streaming and Connected TV (CTV) markets.

Fusing Technology with Process Transformation

What makes this combination particularly noteworthy is the fusion of a technology platform with an operational improvement firm. Innovar Solutions, founded in the early 2000s, carved out a niche by focusing not just on software, but on re-engineering the fundamental processes that underpin media operations. The firm has a history of developing solutions that tackle specific workflow bottlenecks, from creative instruction processing to inventory management.

Innovar’s suite of products, including InnVue for buy-sell automation and InnCreative for streamlining ad copy instructions, demonstrates a granular understanding of the day-to-day challenges faced by ad operations teams. The firm's credibility is further underscored by its past partnerships, such as a 2020 collaboration with Imagine Communications. In that venture, Innovar and Imagine served three of the top five North American multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), helping them migrate to more advanced, cloud-based advertising architectures.

By integrating this process-first DNA into ShowSeeker's technology-driven platform, the combined entity promises a more holistic solution. Instead of simply providing a tool and leaving clients to figure out how to fit it into broken workflows, the new ShowSeeker aims to offer a solution that addresses both the 'what' (the software) and the 'how' (the operational process). This approach could set a new standard for 'full-stack' ad management that goes beyond software to deliver true business transformation.

The Push for a Frictionless Ad Sales Workflow

For media buyers, sellers, and agency personnel, the merger's most immediate impact will be felt in the push for greater automation and a more streamlined workflow. The press release outlines a clear vision to eliminate the manual, error-prone tasks that have plagued the industry for decades.

At the core of this vision is a streamlined product suite that finally merges Order Management and Creative Management into a single, unified system. Historically, these functions have been siloed due to the limitations of legacy traffic systems, creating disconnects and manual workarounds. The new ShowSeeker platform will manage the entire ad sales lifecycle—from proposal to reporting—for linear, streaming, and CTV inventory within one system. The company's modular product approach is also a key feature, allowing organizations to adopt the full suite or integrate specific components that complement their existing tools, offering flexibility rather than a disruptive, all-or-nothing overhaul.

The roadmap's first phase will focus specifically on enhancing Creative Management, signaling a commitment to solving one of the more fragmented parts of ad operations. Further down the line, enhancements are planned for the entire media buying workflow, including content, inventory, rate card, and breaks management.

Another major pillar is improved agency automation. The platform aims to automate the exchange of new orders, makegoods, and revisions, significantly reducing the need for manual data entry. By building this functionality natively into the Pilot platform, ShowSeeker intends to eliminate the need for intermediary systems, allowing users to manage agency orders directly. This promises to accelerate campaign execution, reduce errors, and free up operations teams to focus on more strategic initiatives, marking a significant step toward a more frictionless ad sales future.