As the targeted TV and DOOH advertising spaces heat up, two influential industry players are joining forces to provide small and mid-size businesses with a better way to promote their brands to wider audiences.
AdCritter and Vendasta have each made names for themselves in the digital marketing and advertising space. AdCritter is one of the most well-known self-serve advertising platforms for small businesses. The company provides its clients with a way to purchase targeted TV advertising, along with digital billboards and programmatic internet advertising.
Vendasta, meanwhile, has been delivering digital solutions to local experts around the world for more than a decade. Channel partners use Vendasta’s technology to deliver digital solutions to SMB clients. Vendasta currently serves more than 65,000 channel partners.
Together, AdCritter and Vendasta are offering new advertising solutions for marketing and advertising agencies. Vendasta’s partners will be able to launch ad campaigns on streaming TV, digital billboards and the internet using AdCritter’s tools. They’ll also have the option to resell access to AdCritter’s platform to their SMB clients.
In a press release announcing the partnership, AdCritter Co-Founder and CEO Gabriel Smith said the cost of advertising on social media has nearly tripled in the last two years, which hurts small businesses and makes it harder to reach customers. The arrangement between his company and Vendasta will make it easier for agencies that serve small- and medium-sized businesses to offer more than just search and social advertising solutions.
The deal also has AdCritter joining Vendasta’s existing marketplace of vendors, which includes heavy hitters like Constant Contact, Google products, and Active Campaign.
Spending on DOOH advertising skyrocketed in 2022, after dropping nearly 30% in 2020. However, the complexities involved in creating and managing digital billboards and other types of DOOH campaigns means that the bulk of spending on the channel still comes from national brand advertisers.
AdCritter is working to simplify the complexity of programmatic advertising and make channels like targeted TV and digital billboards available to smaller businesses and agencies.
That SaaS platform that ultimately became AdCritter launched in Nashville in 2014. Smith and his co-founder Eric Busby developed the company with the lofty plan of someday democratizing the adtech industry. Since relaunching the platform post-pandemic, they have developed more than 15 million pre-built ads specifically designed for more than 1,000 business types. The company raised a $4 million venture round in April 2021, bringing its total funding to just over $6 million.
