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StackAdapt

Score8.6 out of 10

48 Reviews and Ratings

What is StackAdapt?

StackAdapt, headquartered in Toronto offers their native advertising specialized DSP, supporting programmatic advertising with audience discovery, B2B targeting, and engagement analytics among other features.

Excellent display advertising tool.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use StackAdapt as an advertising channel for our clients to generate more awareness with their ideal audience. It primarily serves as a top-of-funnel channel that we run along with other channels like Google and Meta ads as a comprehensive marketing approach. It solves our need for a reliable display ads platform with robust audience targeting capabilities, more control, and more trust that our ads are placed on high-quality sites.

Pros

  • Audience targeting - there are so many options for both B2C and B2B audiences, from browsing behavior audiences to account-based marketing audiences to CRM lists. There's a way to find your ideal audience no matter their industry.
  • Pixel setup and management are pretty easy. It uses a universal pixel that you can easily place on your site. We use Google Tag Manager for this. Then, you can create any number of conversion events and easily implement them, also with Google Tag Manager, so we can trust we're getting good tracking.
  • It seems many display ad platforms lack optimization tools, but StackAdapt makes it easy to adjust, add, or remove audiences, pause certain website categories, exclude batches of websites, pause individual ads, and really fine-tune the targeting as you see what works and what doesn't.

Cons

  • Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't seen anywhere on the platform that allows me to easily set up dynamic retargeting ads. I know it can be done, but it seems it requires support and help.
  • An easier ad builder or something like a responsive display ad builder like Google would be useful. It is cumbersome to upload a bunch of different display ad sizes, and the creatives hub doesn't have any templates for regular static display ads. They should incorporate the creative hub into the campaign setup.
  • Generally, the CPM is pretty high across all ad types, but this is because of the quality of the network of sites manually vetted individually. So we don't get as many clicks and impressions as we could with the same budget on Google, so we have to make sure our ads and targeting are near perfect.

Return on Investment

  • For one of our clients, we've generated over 4.3x ROAS this year, which far exceeded our expectations for a programmatic display ad platform.
  • Getting results for our clients with StackAdapt gives us an edge in attracting new clients, which helps us maintain client retention and satisfaction.

Alternatives Considered

Criteo

Other Software Used

Semrush, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Feedonomics, Shopify, Microsoft Advertising, Google Search Console

Not the best, but it gets the job done.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use StackAdapt as our DSP, most commonly for running programmatic display, audio (podcasts and commercials), and connected TV (including on specialty channels like Hulu, Disney+, etc.). They are currently the only CTV and programmatic audio vendor that we use, and we use them as a managed service. We have a StackAdapt rep who sets up and maintains the campaigns for us, and we pull our own reporting on performance via an API connection.

Pros

  • Affordable placements & ad delivery.
  • Managed service means saved time for our agency.
  • Reasonable service fee to use them for managed media services.

Cons

  • There has been occasional slopping maintenance of the campaigns, and we have to follow up with questions about spending spikes or significant changes in delivery CPMs.
  • Account rep knowledge can sometimes be lacking. When we question our reps about performance, we sometimes get confusing or nonsensical answers.
  • The reporting UI is definitely clunky and unintuitive.

Return on Investment

  • Thanks for utilizing managed service, using StackAdapt has allowed us to offer CTV and audio buys while only adding a minimal amount of work to our own workloads.
  • StackAdapt's placement has been good for awareness campaigns, as they allow for affordable, large-scale advertising to broad audiences.
  • Their platform is usually not part of our strategy when we focus on action/purchase/conversion because driving action from these placements is pretty rare.

Alternatives Considered

Basis DSP

Other Software Used

Mintel, Improvado, Looker Studio, Asana, Harvest, Expensify

Affordable CPM's + Great Audience Segmentation

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use StackAdapt's programmatic buys for awareness campaigns where we need affordable CPM's. This is more focused on finding the right eyeballs for impressions than direct-response conversions. Testing multiple tactics (display, native, audio, CTV) for the same audience segmentation is great. Also, their geofencing capabilities are some of the easiest to set up and launch (though you have to watch out for adding too many constraints for a small geofenced area).

Pros

  • Affordable CPM rates
  • 3rd party audience segmentation
  • Ease of self-serve platform
  • Low minimum ad buy requirement
  • Fast customer support responses (and helpful)

Cons

  • Budget can spend quickly if you don't enable pacing guardrails
  • Low conversion rates
  • Too many mobile ad placements if you don't limit in the settings

Return on Investment

  • 10x lower CPM than similar LinkedIn Ads
  • Tight geofencing to promote a short-duration conference
  • Spending budget too quickly when pacing is not explicitly set

Usability

Unveiling StackAdapt: Transforming Digital Advertising with Precision and Performance.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We mostly use StackAdapt, a flexible platform, for our online advertising requirements. It can be used in display, video, native, and social media, among other channels. The following describes how StackAdapt is used in our company and the business issues it helps us solve: Audience Targeting: With StackAdapt, we can target our target audience with precision by using a range of characteristics, including behaviors, interests, and even contextual relevance. By ensuring that the proper people see our ads, this targeting capacity raises the possibility of engagement and conversions.Campaign Optimization: Real-time analytics and performance tracking are the only two powerful capabilities the platform offers for campaign optimization. We can keep a close eye on the effectiveness of our efforts and quickly make changes to optimize return on investment. Creative Optimization: StackAdapt provides tools to test various ad creatives and optimize them according to performance indicators. This enables us to determine which creatives connect with our audience the most, resulting in more successful advertising campaigns. Cross-Channel Integration: We can oversee our digital advertising campaigns from a single dashboard by using StackAdapt. As a result, our workflow is streamlined, and our marketing campaigns can be more consistently coordinated. Data Insights: With its reporting and analytics tools, the platform offers insightful data on audience behavior, campaign performance, and industry trends. These observations support our data-driven decisions to keep refining our advertising approach.

Pros

  • Advanced Audience Targeting.
  • Dynamic Creative Optimization.
  • Cross-Device Targeting.
  • Real-Time Reporting and Optimization.

Cons

  • Simplified User Interface.
  • More Robust Reporting Tools.
  • Improved Cross-Channel Integration.
  • Enhanced Audience Insights.

Return on Investment

  • Competition and Saturation.
  • High Cost.
  • Improved Conversion Rates.

StackAdapt Programmatic Advertising Solution

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At [...] we have used StackAdapt as a in house advertising platform for a strategic approach for certain populations or target audiences. This gives us an advantage as it is an easy to use tool with a variety of channels for advertising. In the industry of real estate, we need to be creative and strategic with our approach. We are able to use this all in one product to plan and analyze in real time the results and interactions with our customers and prospects.

Pros

  • Accessible human support
  • Customer service oriented
  • User friendly platform

Cons

  • Limited reporting capabilities
  • Poor reporting for what is provided

Return on Investment

  • We are able to use the hard data to target audiences further and drill down on a certain user or demographic in the industry
  • I would say this program has increased the ROI by 2-300% roughly.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Ads and Basis DSP