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StackAdapt: Google's New Native Ad Partner Shifting How Brands Monetize Content

This article is more than 7 years old.

Native advertising is projected to become a $20 billion business by 2020, as content becomes increasingly shorter and made specifically for mobile consumption.

In a recent study, 43% of consumers reported that reading branded editorial or watching a branded video heightened their trust with the brand. Additionally, 55% of consumers reported that branded content directly influenced their purchasing behavior. Research also revealed that average engagement with branded content is just under three minutes, equivalent to the time it takes to read most editorial content.

This shift sparked the interest of tech giant Google, prompting proactive efforts to expand their native ad products and monetization solutions for brand partners. In August, Google integrated a suite of new tools to help publishers better engage audiences, generate leads and scale platforms. One strategic partner Google picked up in September to fulfill this vision was StackAdapt.

Launched in 2013, StackAdapt is a native advertising engine that helps brands deliver quality mobile video content directly to target markets. Joining Google AdX, the tech power hopes to create the most effective content marketing platform in the world. "StackAdapt’s expertise in native advertising makes it a natural fit to become a Google AdX partner,” says Cameron Hourd, Head of Industry, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Google Canada. “We're excited to work with them to deliver quality content to the market."

This partnership symbolizes a definitive shift in the digital marketing space, offering businesses more impactful, mobile-ready ad formats. “In the ever more competitive online marketing landscape, brand loyalty is what all companies need to aim for, because it is simply too difficult to build long term relationships with consumers through interruptive, transaction-based forms of advertising,” stated StackAdapt COO Vitaly Pecherskiy. “Native advertising is all about distributing value-adding content in a manner that gives users choices, and they respond positively.”

Brands have become the new media and entertainment empires, launching their own record labels, content studios, ad agencies and multi-channel networks. We’ve seen several examples of this shift from powerhouses such as Red Bull, Pepsi, and American Express. More than creating multimedia content and mobile experiences, these companies are sponsoring events, producing tours and curating cultural moments.

As the advertising industry evolved from billboards and banners into a content-driven playing field, brands quickly rushed to collaborate with global media partners that controlled specific segments of culture. Rooted in shared values, media companies and global brands began collaborating to develop content, platforms and experiences that organically integrated into people’s everyday lives. This growing relationship sparked the birth of branded content, which years later, has expanded into a landscape where the most impactful brands are also publishers with internal ad agencies.

When brands started controlling the products, platforms and content, marketing strategies transitioned from paid media to owned media – media buys to native advertising. “Google starting to offer native ad inventory is a huge validation to the work that we have been doing over the last three years,” says Pecherskiy. “It's exciting to see these high performing, non-interruptive ad formats being so widely adopted. It is a good thing for everyone – users, publishers, and advertisers.”

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