We’re testing out StackAdapt & you should be too
Advertising platforms are a major part of a digital marketer’s tool belt. With Google holding 38.6% of the total US ad spend, and Facebook holding almost 20%, they account for over half the market. Throw in Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram and you’ve basically got the whole pie.
They’re all amazing in their own way, so it’s easy to see why everyone uses them. But isn’t that a problem? Everyone uses them? What do you think marketing saturation means for your CPC, your visibility, and your clicks?
That isn’t to say you shouldn’t be using the Facebook’s of the world. If they bring you results, keep it rolling, but if your numbers are in decline and your audience has disappeared, no amount of ad spend is going bring them back. If this is the case, it’s time to move on and try something else.
Even if things are working, a great marketer will play the field. It’s easy to stick with the platforms you know, but what happens if Facebook goes away? Here at Stryve, one of our mottos is “never settle”, which means we’re always looking ahead, we’re always thinking of the next step, and we’re always ready to try new things.
Enter, StackAdapt.[/intro]
WHY STACKADAPT?
If you know anything about us, food is the way to our hearts. So when StackAdapt sent us a box of chocolates, we were instantly hooked. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that easy, but the chocolates were a nice touch. When they arrived, we had already had several “What’s next?” conversations and were doing our due diligence by checking out some potential new tactics and platforms. I like to think everything happens for a reason, and those chocolates definitely showed up in the right place, at the right time.
StackAdapt is an advertising platform that offers native, display, and video advertising. In our case, native advertising is what caught our interest initially. We had been hearing a lot of talk about this tactic, and with several campaigns revolving around content, we were interested in learning more about it and how it could work for us.
We went into the demo call with some skepticism, but came out excited to give it a shot. Our account manager, Oliver, was extremely knowledgeable and able to answer every single question we threw at him (and there were a lot!). All things considered, it seemed like StackAdapt was basically a hybrid of a bunch of different platforms, taking all the best features and adding a few gems of their own. Here are some of our favourites:
- Retargeting and prospecting capabilities
- Intent based targeting/custom audience segments – they use keywords and machine learning to understand what people read online and target them
- Cost-per-engagement (CPE) bidding
- No minimum budgets
- Google Analytics integration right in the platform
- Intuitive user interface
- Incredible support from the account team
We dove in and started testing 3 campaign types; native, display retargeting, and display prospecting. It’s still early, nothing’s trending, but we’ve seen some positive signs. We have high hopes for StackAdapt and will be following up on this post with our full review. We could strike gold or we could strike out. In the meantime, we’ll be optimizing campaigns and keeping an eye on results.
Whether it’s StackAdapt or another platform, I encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and test things out. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results, but you’ll never know if you don’t try. That said, be smart about it; read reviews, try the demos, and be selective. Don’t give in to every LinkedIn cold call and don’t give time to every company that sends you chocolate.
