StackAdapt Says Impressions are Dead, Moves to Engagement-Based Pricing for Advertisers

Company moves away from impressions and towards engagements for content distribution

TORONTO, April 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Today, StackAdapt, the world's largest platform for the native distribution of branded content, announced the launch of its cost-per-engagement (CPE) pricing, designed to help advertisers bridge the gap between ad spend and meaningful user engagement. CPE pricing means that impressions are free, and advertisers are required to pay only when a user has engaged with a piece of content for at least 15 seconds. StackAdapt is the first native advertising platform to offer CPE pricing to advertisers.

"The entire advertising ecosystem is built around impressions, which are an outdated metric, and they don't reflect who actually reads your content. So we are trying to reimagine how things should work and build solutions to match them," said Vitaly Pecherskiy, co-founder, StackAdapt. "Marketers have been searching for a solution that allows them to dig deeper and better understand who's actually reading and interacting with content, and then appending a dollar value to it. The metric of choice has become cost per engagement."

StackAdapt's engagement-based pricing will allow advertisers to effectively bid on user attention - paying only for the users who read the content post-click, instead of paying based on who sees a sponsored post preview. The average online attention span is eight to twelve seconds, as reported by Time, and StackAdapt defines engagement in 15-second increments.

The vast majority of publishers and advertising companies measure the success of campaigns using impressions - whether users have seen an ad or not - a metric that was adopted to digital advertising from print more than twenty years ago. Measuring the success of a campaign using impressions doesn't hold much value in the promotion of branded content since advertisers want users to read their content - not just glance at its preview.

Pricing content on an engagement model means StackAdapt's clients will be able to automatically optimize towards audience segments that drive engagement. This means advertisers are only paying for the metric that moves the needle for the brand.

"Native advertising ensures that the content we're producing is served when our audience is engaged and ready to take action, and StackAdapt's ability to track and optimize towards post-click user engagement allows us to measure that engagement in real time," said Anthony Cordo, Director of Explore Victoria.

Since its launch in 2013 StackAdapt has worked with Fortune 500 companies, agencies, and brands including Iowa Tourism, M2, and Adzouk to run over 3,500 campaigns, placing sponsored content on over 40,000 publisher sites. In January 2016 the company raised $1 million in Series A funding from Plaza Ventures to expand its team.

To learn more about StackAdapt, visit www.stackadapt.com.

Social links:
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/stackadapt
Twitter https://twitter.com/StackAdapt
Blog http://blog.stackadapt.com/

About StackAdapt
StackAdapt's mission is to impact consumers with content that matters. Its innovative technology supplies the world's largest brands with attention driven insights and pricing to their content distribution efforts. Additional information can be found at stackadapt.com.

SOURCE StackAdapt