Video specialists
August 30, 2019

Video specialists

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

Overall Satisfaction with Vungle

We have worked with Vungle as an ad network and as an exchange as well. They had a lot of volume as an ad network, but their exchange business is still developing. They are video only or at least 90% of their inventory is video. They have good coverage on the US but not so much in the rest of the world.
  • You can work on a CPI basis on the network level.
  • Strong in the US. A lot of inventory there.
  • SSP integration very fast and good technical team.
  • Product development. They have not evolved their product significantly still offering the same videos they had 3 years ago.
  • Slow to respond to product questions.
  • Not enough scale on APAC GEOS.
  • We have gotten good CPAs, but we have had to bid high CPMs.
  • They were reluctant to do a rebate deal, which is something standard once you hit a certain volume of spend, which worsened ROI.
  • No buy sides fees, which is a big plus for profitability.
I would say is a standard video SSP. The reporting dashboard is well designed and easy to use and throttling options are standard. They seem to be confident about their inventory and they don't really evolve their product and add new betas or create audiences or do anything out of the ordinary.
Their support team is a bit slow. You have to re-send your email questions constantly because the first email never gets a reply. Their core business is still the ad network which does not involve a lot of human interaction so they are still working on how to evolve their account management team to be an exchange.
Vungle stands out as the only video only exchange. It is their main selling point and they have carved out a nice niche that differentiates them from the rest of SSPs. Their main competition, in my opinion, is Teads, which has focused the product more towards branding in order to monetize better for its publishers by getting higher bids.
Vungle works well for branding and performance as video is a high impact format that and that has good CTRs and CVRs. However, for advertisers without a lot of budget, Vungle may not be a good option as the CPMs on the exchange are very high. For branding there are alternatives that have a more developed product, where video can be targeted near content the user may like, like Teads.