Smaato is a supply-side publisher platform (SSP) from the Verve Group since the 2021 acquisition.
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StackAdapt
Score 8.3 out of 10
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StackAdapt, headquartered in Toronto offers their native advertising specialized DSP, supporting programmatic advertising with audience discovery, B2B targeting, and engagement analytics among other features.
Smaato is very well suited for user acquisition and retargeting companies. Their overlap in terms of audiences and publishers with other exchanges is very limited, which makes it a great alternative when you need to scale a campaign and want to maintain your frequency cap. They work very well in branding campaigns as well as performance campaigns.
StackAdapt's programmatic buys are great for a quick awareness campaign to reach the most eyeballs. Solid user segmentation from 3rd party sources that is available almost immediately. The platform is less proficient at converting users, though I've never had sufficient volume to test if this works better for enterprise-level clients with more conversion data
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.
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.
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
Smaato has a UI where you can control your line items on the traffic you want to receive. That is a key unique selling point that other SSPs don't offer. Most of the items that you will need like reporting can be done on a self serve manner and that is a big plus, specifically for changes that need to happen really fast and you don't need to deal with account managers that may take some time to answer emails.
It is very user friendly and if any team members need further help, we are able to easily access their customer service team for hands on assistance with an actual human being, not a robot. Their team has been incredibly kind, understanding and thorough. It is really a great all in one tool for a business who relies greatly on advertising campaigns.
Smaato's account management team is very professional. They are quite fast in terms of customer support, which is very helpful. One item that stands out is that they are willing to understand what you need for each campaign and what is the best way to move forward. They don't just jump quickly into trying to upsell more of Smaato's products (audiences, data) like other SSPs do.
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
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.
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.
