StackAdapt shows global reach with online advertising innovation
Photo of StackAdapt staff.
The motto of StackAdapt’s founders is to “Fearlessly Invent the Future.”
Vitaly Pecherskiy and co-founders Ildar Shar and Yang Han started StackAdapt in 2013 to apply data, analysis and machine learning to online advertising. They are now working with hundreds of companies globally and went from 56 employees in 2018 to 120 people only a year later. Exporting was directly responsible for this growth.
“Software is easily scalable, meaning Australia is the same as Canada for our products,” says Pecherskiy.
The company has its eyes on global trade agreements like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) with Asia-Pacific region countries, which eases the company’s transition toward international markets.
“Marketing is as much science as it is art,” says Pecherskiy on the subtle strategy behind their success.
Forbes predicts native advertising will become a US$36-billion business by 2021 as it answers the need for mobile content. People are not always open to a jarring sales pitch from banner ads or pop-ups, so native advertising blends the ad content into websites.
“It is usually a snippet or preview of content the user is taken to after clicking a native ad that is integrated into the organic experience, so it looks and feels like the website they’re on,” explains Pecherskiy.
According to Nielsen findings, 71% of millennials spend at least five to 10 hours a week consuming content and 20% of them spend more than 20 hours doing so.
“Everybody has a smartphone and everybody is on it all the time,” says Pecherskiy. “This mobile-first approach means this form of advertising is blowing up right now.”
Along with finding a supportive partner in Google Canada, the company has won a number of tech awards. In 2014, Pecherskiy was featured in Marketing Magazine’s list of Top 30 Under 30.
So what was the hardest part of getting to where they are now?
“The fact is, we are doing everything for the first time. We’re growing, learning how to manage, how to recruit, how to build processes from scratch, all during this fragile growth period,” he says.
Pecherskiy says Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service and other Government of Canada help was crucial.
“We had help in so many ways in development and grants, and connecting us with mentors and the Canadian Technology Accelerator,” he says.
The journey to success has put their motto to the test as they fearlessly invent their global future.
“With our motto, we were thinking about the very fibre of our company and what was in our DNA,” says Pecherskiy. “This is the way we see the world and this is our opportunity to invent it.”
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