Many companies say they help brands and publishers use technology to really stand out in the increasingly monotonous and commoditized digital sphere. AdGear, however, proved this year it can back up that claim to great effect.
There’s perhaps no better example than IKEA’s #ShareTheBathroom campaign, which won Best of Show at the Media Innovation Awards this year. To promote the retailer’s bathroom products, Leo Burnett and Jungle Media conceived of an app that let users create their own messages for family members about their bad bathroom habits. AdGear built custom programmatic technology to turn users’ messages into dynamic display ads and retarget them at the household’s IP address. So those complaints that mom doesn’t pick up her towels pops up on a site she actually visits along with an ad for towel hooks.
Though technically very difficult, the campaign was a clear success. More than 17,000 Canadians visited the ad creation page, resulting in more than 800,000 user-generated ad impressions. Bathroom sales increased 12% in-store and 34% online during the campaign.
AdGear co-founder and president Yves Poiré says it’s easy to overlook the opportunity for brands and publishers to use ad tech to differentiate themselves, especially when they are using off-the-shelf technology from global tech giants. “We see ourselves as a company that can help companies on either the advertising or publishing side become special,” he says. “We want to fight commodity. We want to fight the Googles.”
AdGear’s boutique, service-oriented approach has helped the Montreal tech player form much closer relationships with brands than most direct competitors. In the past year clients like St-Hubert, Ubisoft and The Government of Canada have all brought AdGear to the table alongside their media agencies as a first-ever ad tech vendor of record, as did Simons and Belair Direct in previous years.
As a result of these wins, AdGear’s annual revenue is up 191% this year. It’s also opened a new sales office in Toronto to build its business beyond Quebec.
Though it’s entirely self-funded and working with as few as 40 employees, AdGear has put together a technology stack that’s comparable to global independent ad tech players like Turn or Rocket Fuel, with an ad server, demand-side platform (DSP), data management platform (DMP) and yield optimization platform for publishers.
But rather than try to productize its solutions and distribute them as widely as possible (as has become the norm in ad tech), AdGear creates custom, whitelabel solutions for each of the brands, agencies and publishers it works with.
“If you’re a Canadian company or a midmarket brand in the States, it’s very hard to get anything special, or anything custom from a Facebook, a Google, a Trade Desk or a Turn,” says Poiré. AdGear, by contrast, offers a “white glove approach,” he says. “We’re in a position to talk business with them, and connect the dots between their business problems and our platform. Service is a big component of that.”
Publishers face a similar dilemma when it comes to standing out in programmatic. Top Canadian publishers are still just one among thousands of sellers in Google’s or Facebook’s marketplace, which can make it very difficult to create unique ways for brands to connect with consumers.
That’s why publishers like the Toronto Star and La Presse have also turned to AdGear to power their custom ad experiences. AdGear developed the rich media, interactive advertising and ad measurement tools for the wildly successful La Presse+ tablet app, and was tapped this year to do the same for the Toronto Star‘s StarTouch. La Presse expects three quarters of its December revenue to flow from its tablet app, largely thanks to the creative canvas and highly engaged audience it provides to advertisers.
Poiré says rather than wait to be invited into the walled gardens of Google and Facebook, top Canadian publishers should be creating their own attractive gardens for brands to play in. “The potential is great for us to empower innovators, to help media companies that don’t just want to be spectators in the media game but want to be players,” he says.
