With 100 new jobs planned, new Stratacache business to take root downtown

Stratacache owner and founder Chris Riegel bought the building late last year.

PRN this week announced the opening of the new center “which will extend PRN’s capability to create, deploy and support in-store retail media networks globally, with a primary focus on in-store and connected TV networks.”

Stratacache’s aim is to help retail businesses create a better shopping experience for their own customers. The company creates technology that focuses on targeted advertising and helping retailers better understand what their customers want.

The new center is starting to hire now, Riegel said in an interview Tuesday. Stratacache has about 350 employees in downtown Dayton; he envisions a day when a thousand of the company’s employees will work there.

Riegel plans to have the new center advancing technology that harnesses connected and streaming TV and TV advertising. Streaming advertising in 2023 reached $6 billion; this year, that spending is expected to reach $30 billion, which comes out of the $100 billion annual television marketing space, Riegel said.

Broadcast advertising isn’t targeted “at all,” he said. Stratacache seeks to advance technology that helps brands create more targeted and efficient marketing.

“The sector is moving incredibly quickly,” Riegel, who is also Stratacache’s CEO, told the Dayton Daily News.

A statement from PRN said the center will grow in the Premier building to “deliver expertise that covers a full scope of in-store retail media, including in-store digital networks, programmatic retargeting, streaming/CTV (connected TV), mobile and digital out-of-home” business.

“Continuing to expand and evolve the Dayton tech ecosystem is critical for the growth of the local economy,” Riegel said in the company’s announcement. “We’re committed to a continuous growth of not only our digital media businesses but also our investment in the Dayton community.”

Riegel has been a steady investor in core downtown properties in the past five or more years. He bought what was Kettering Tower for $13 million in February 2019, a little over a year before the world of office work was forever changed.

Today, the building at Second and Main streets, across from 110 N. Main St., has been renamed “Stratacache Tower.”

Over time, Riegel’s real estate divisions have come to control, or be poised to control, three of four corners around Second and Main streets downtown.