Italy-based MainAd has expanded into the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic to support programmatic advertising and performance-based services. The company supports clients in Europe and
APAC regions and has appointed Ben Segal to U.S. VP of Americas.
The goal is to carve out a new space that does not exist today, Segal said. He has plenty of experience to do it, having
previously served as VP of sales and programmatic partnerships at advertising-technology company Iponweb and holding roles at DataXu and Salesforce.
“We would love to launch into the
United States when it’s not during a pandemic, but that’s not the hand we were dealt,” Segal said.
The idea came about after testing MainAd’s platform in the United
States with Swarovski, and Farfetch, among others. Positive results from tests encouraged the company to expand.
“We felt the ability to optimize the outcomes and take on
one-hundred percent performance campaigns during this time of uncertainty would be valuable,” he said. “Especially during a time when brands want to move to a different mode of buying, get
away from media and align with performance goals.”
MainAd also has the ability to work through some of the affiliate channels. Most programmatic platforms don’t operate that
way, he said, which makes the company different. They don’t operate on a performance basis because they’re algorithms are not set up that way.
“We’ll ingest first-party
data, optimize and do it on a CPA basis, and then serve dynamic creatives connected to the path to purchase,” Segal said.
The company, founded in 2007, also plans to hire ad operations,
business analysts, sales, and account managers by the end of 2020 to support the market expansion.
The company is basing its growth projections on data from advertiser activity in APAC and the
EU, where COVID-19 economic recovery efforts have been underway.
Only 19% of the company’s clients that were active in January decided to pause efforts for March and April, based on
MainAd’s data. Some 40.2% of the company’s active clients increased sales between the first week of February and first week of April.
The company expects a similar recovery in U.S.
media budgets in the coming months.