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Unique reach that comes at a price
Updated April 16, 2021

Unique reach that comes at a price

Gabriela Band | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Smaato

Smaato is a great partner for our programmatic campaigns. We have worked with them over the last 2 years, mainly for mobile campaigns although we used them for some desktop inventory as well. Our main point of cooperation was around inventory on their SSP on all standard IAB formats except playable ads, which we have not run with them.
  • Great QPS control. You are able to control your infrastructure costs while also receiving inventory that interests you.
  • Very good support team, fast to answer any questions about the product.
  • Exclusive reach. We have found that most of Smaato's audience can not be found on other SSPs.
  • Inventory can be a bit pricey in competitive markets like the US.
  • Reporting dashboard is limited, needs work.
  • They don't offer a lof of transparency about margins over media cost.
  • We have seen prices a bit high, thus reducing profitability
  • However, the vast reach has allowed us to get more budgets and fulfill them so the net effect is positive.
  • We have been able to run campaigns that targeted the same user on mobile and desktop by running with Smaato and that has allowed us to get more budgets from specific clients.
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.
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.
Smaato has better anti-fraud controls than most exchanges. Even if the inventory ends up being a bit pricey, I am more comfortable running campaigns on Smaato because I know there won't be any issues with the clients claiming refunds for invalid traffic. I believe that as the industry matures, other SSPs will follow suit and prices will increase along with the board.
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.