StackAdapt vs. The Trade Desk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
StackAdapt
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
StackAdapt, headquartered in Toronto offers their native advertising specialized DSP, supporting programmatic advertising with audience discovery, B2B targeting, and engagement analytics among other features.N/A
The Trade Desk
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
The Trade Desk is the eponymous flagship product from the company headquartered in Ventura California, a demand-side / data management hybrid platform (DSP / DMP).N/A
Pricing
StackAdaptThe Trade Desk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
StackAdaptThe Trade Desk
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
StackAdaptThe Trade Desk
Considered Both Products
StackAdapt
Chose StackAdapt
StackAdapt is significantly less expensive than The Trade Desk. StackAdapt doesn't have campaign minimums, unlike The Trade Desk, meaning you can experiment with a lower ad spend to gain client confidence before investing at a larger level. Plus they don't lock you into an …
Chose StackAdapt
I chose to continue with StackAdapt mainly because of the improvements it has made in the last few years.

Constant improvements and frequent feature releases created a sense of trust in building my business along with StackAdapt.
Chose StackAdapt
We've run native campaigns in other platforms and they just don't measure up to the performance we see coming from StackAdapt.
The Trade Desk

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
StackAdaptThe Trade Desk
Small Businesses
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 6.9 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
StackAdaptThe Trade Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(24 ratings)
7.1
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.5
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
StackAdaptThe Trade Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
StackAdapt
Campaigns for Brand Awareness: StackAdapt works effectively in campaigns for brand awareness where expanding brand visibility and reaching a large audience are the main objectives. Advertisers can target particular demographics, hobbies, and behaviors with its sophisticated targeting features, making sure that the correct audience groups receive brand messaging.
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The Trade Desk
After extensive research of DSP and DMP platforms in the market, our agency made the wise decision to license TTD's platform and develop a long-term partnership. TTD continues to innovate and offer cutting-edge media buying solutions, access to more audience data segments, and access to new and emerging media channels like CTV/OTT and digital-out-of-home. We couldn't be happier with TTD's technology and is one of the most advanced agency users of TTD is a key differentiator for our agency.
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Pros
StackAdapt
  • 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.
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The Trade Desk
  • User engagement - Cookie matching provides better engagement and effectiveness
  • Reporting of campaigns - Great reporting on display advertising & platforms
  • Dashboard reporting - Scalable to global deployment & campaigns
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Cons
StackAdapt
  • 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.
Read full review
The Trade Desk
  • Reporting platform leaves a lot to be desired. Requires a lot of trial/error to pull exactly what you need to drive optimizations/learnings.
  • The "stop"/"continue bidding" feature for sitelists, devices, player sizes, etc is awful. When you set something up specifically, you should not have the AUTOMATIC option to serve beyond those parameters.
  • Trafficking video (VAST/VPAID) tags requires a manual insertion of a click URL. Completely redundant ask and is not provided by advertisers as that URL lives within the ad tag. Should not require multiple actions traffic a video tag.
  • Creative approval process (manual) doesn't seem necessary and is not a part of peers' platforms. There is no "pause/deactivate" feature for creative, you remove them or adjust the end date.
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Likelihood to Renew
StackAdapt
The platform is easy to use and understand whether it is being used as self-serve or a managed service. The audience targeting is solid, and array of placements is versatile. With these, the level of engagement for video content is usually great
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The Trade Desk
No answers on this topic
Usability
StackAdapt
Simple, streamlined interface. I would rate it higher if there was a proper agency portal (like an MCC "My Client Center") that allows you to control multiple client accounts from a unified login.
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The Trade Desk
It's very intuitive. We had some training materials, but found that users were able to navigate through the software without needing many resources. Our only suggestion would be to add hover-over capability in the browser, so users can see a pop-up message further explaining what each button does.
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Support Rating
StackAdapt
Support has been exceptional. Our dedicated team is always available and ready to answer any questions that may arise. We receive updates from them on a regular basis and they go above and beyond providing assistance when needed. The team is absolutely one of the bright spots in our relationship with StackAdapt
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The Trade Desk
We noted no issues with our limited interaction with support. The software operated just as expected and we found that we were able to navigate needs on our own. We understand that The Trade Desk offers excellent support, so we believe it will be a good resource to us in the future.
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Alternatives Considered
StackAdapt
StackAdapt is significantly less expensive than The Trade Desk. StackAdapt doesn't have campaign minimums, unlike The Trade Desk, meaning you can experiment with a lower ad spend to gain client confidence before investing at a larger level. Plus they don't lock you into an annual contract or anything long term. It feels very similar to The Trade Desk but without the high contract.
Read full review
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk is a much better product than AppNexus. Even though both products showed promise awhile back, AppNexus stopped innovating and The Trade Desk became specialists on data, cross site tracking and CTV inventory thus having a better and more unique product that actually adds value to your advertising efforts.
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Return on Investment
StackAdapt
  • Excellent traffic from our ads. Traffic exceeded our forecast.
  • Excellent management of our budget. We did not spend near as much as we budgeted for the response we received through our test.
  • The lead conversion was not expected to be high due to the type of content we deployed, but we received zero conversions, well below anticipated when compared to other ads for the same content.
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The Trade Desk
  • The good thing about having an agency account is The Trade Desk lets you add your markups to the client billing.
  • We had a very positive response from clients regarding their perceived ROI on their ad spend through The Trade Desk.
  • We did not have many national clients, mostly local dealerships, so it was difficult for them to allocate a lot of funds to display advertising, even though the ROI yield was acceptable.
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ScreenShots