Toronto-based StackAdapt, a native advertising platform that allows clients to access global native advertising inventory on one platform, announced that it has raised a $1 million Series A in a round led by Plaza Ventures.
“There is never an end to how well a technology can work since marketing is as much science as it is art.”
StackAdapt’s platform — which the company said is used by Fortune 500 brands and agencies — provides a suite of tools that allow companies to launch native advertising campaigns and distribute branded content across publisher sites. StackAdapt has partnered with over 30 major native advertising exchanges including TripleLift, AdsNative, InMobi, and European native advertising company Adyoulike, and has access to over 35,000 publisher sites including ABC News, Reuters, USA Today, and Popular Science.
Native advertising is increasingly being seen as an alternative to banner or pop-up ads, which people often ignore. While marketers are turning to content marketing, native advertising has become the distribution method of choice for this content.
“There are a number of trends that gave rise to native advertising,” StackAdapt co-founder Vitaly Pecherskiy told BetaKit. “There’s been a shift to mobile. Tiny banner ads simply could not capture users attention. Native advertising offers an organic integration of sponsored content into the user experience.”
He said that the advantage of working with StackAdapt is its centralized buying platform across many native advertising sources; since StackAdapt doesn’t work with publishers directly, Pecherskiy stresses that the company does not have a conflict of interest about revenue publishers and ROI for advertisers, and instead stays focused on driving results for advertising clients. The company will use the funding to “aggressively” build its data science and engineering teams to continue to scale its platform.
“There is never an end to how well a technology can work since marketing is as much science as it is art,” Pecherskiy said. “We will continue investing in our video product, and grow into other areas to address pressing issues in content marketing industry such as understanding the impact of content.”
Adtech is considered a tough industry as the technology is constantly evolving and client expectations change. But that hasn’t deterred Pecherskiy, who has been featured in Marketing Magazine’s 30 Under 30 for his work with StackAdapt. “I personally love this industry exactly for this reason — so many opportunities for innovation! The way we address the quickly evolving space and our product is by removing the ‘walls’ and bringing technology closer to the end users.”
