For many companies, finding the right advertising agency can be a challenge, especially given the digital-focused lifestyles of today’s consumers. Modern-day advertising takes on a variety of different forms, from video and social media to radio and television. As brands around the world attempt to keep up with consumers, there is a greater need for companies to step up their advertising game, which calls for a bit of help from the experts.
San Francisco is home to countless adtech companies, which are reinventing the ways in which businesses advertise their products and attract the right audiences. In order to help companies achieve these goals, adtech professionals employ a variety of data analytics and software in order to gauge a brand’s audience and formulate a custom advertising plan of attack. Whether you’re seeking to convert high-value customers or searching for a better way to scale operations, these 21 adtech companies in San Francisco will help unlock your company’s creative potential.
Adtech Companies in San Francisco To Know
- Demandbase
- Marin Software
- Metric Theory
- Segment
- Smartly.io
- AdRoll
- AdEspresso
- Liftoff+Vungle
- Quantcast
Founded: 2012
Location: Redwood City
What they do: Liftoff+Vungle utilizes data-driven technology and machine learning practices to drive post-install conversions in mobile apps and increase engagement amongst users. The platform helps discover audience overlap for better targeting throughout the application ecosystem, making it easier to install highly personalized ad delivery systems and filters that help eliminate fraudulent installs.
Who they work with: IMVU, MyTona, Pixonic and JOOM.
Founded: 2006
Location: SOMA
What they do: Quantcast operates an AI-driven audience behavior platform that allows brand marketers and publishers ro better quantify audience insights. The platform generates granular audience metrics in real-time to create specific and predictive models that provide marketing teams with data on how audiences will respond to different marketing efforts, allowing brands to communicate more clearly and convert more customers.
Who they work with: McDonald’s, Whole Foods, Toyota and Blue Apron.
Founded: 2012
Location: Financial District
What they do: Metric Theory is a performance digital marketing agency that specializes in driving results for B2B technology companies, direct-to-consumer brands, consumer app companies, fast-growing startups and e-commerce sites. The company offers a variety of services such as interpreting data to know which ads, targets, and landing pages drive the best results, as well as providing additional insights into campaigns. Metric Theory also provides assistance with search engine marketing, paid social, shopping ads, Amazon advertising, product feed management, digital video and conversion optimization.
Who they work with: GoFundMe, FabFitFun, Optimizely, Personal Capital, Too Faced, Tradesy and Carvana.
Founded: 2006
Location: The East Cut
What they do: Marin Software gives digital advertisers and agencies the power to optimize their paid marketing programs. The company offers a unified platform for search, social and e-commerce advertising, helping digital audiences convert precise audiences, win new customers and make better decisions. Marin Software has helped advertisers manage over $40 billion in search, social and e-commerce ad spend, taking advantage of all available data, aligning ad campaigns with publisher best practices and using machine learning to allocate budgets and calculate bids.
Who they work with: Symantec, Bloomingdale’s, eHarmony, Lonely Planet, Dell, Square, Zendesk and SurveyMonkey.
Founded: 2013
Location: The East Cut
What they do: Smartly.io is committed to powering beautifully effective ads, automating every step of social advertising to unlock greater performance and creativity. Serving more than 650 brands worldwide, the company is building a platform that automates creative production and ad buying at scale. Smartly.io provides companies with the tools to generate thousands of ad variations automatically, conduct seamless testing, reduce time spent on campaign management, convert high value customers, scale operations effectively, and more.
Who they work with: Uber, McDonald’s, Barkbox, Hopper, eBay, Walmart Brasil, Skyscanner, TechStyle and Bamboo.
Founded: 2007
Location: Mission District
What they do: NextRoll is designed to accelerate growth for companies of varying sizes. The company boasts a suite of data-driven marketing and advertising solutions, helping clients across the world understand, attract and engage buyers, while driving growth for their businesses. NextRoll's external APIs enable clients to build their own marketing solutions or enhance existing capabilities and data, while their core and data technology lends them the expertise and infrastructure they need to compete.
Who they work with: Commerce and B2B companies.
Founded: 2011
Location: San Francisco
What they do: Vungle works with app developers and publishers of all sizes to monetize space within their apps through ads or other creative solutions. The company’s ad platform gives developers the tools to control, adjust and monitor the ads that appear within the app to give users the best experience and for developers to maximize their monetization.
Who they work with: TikTok, Peak, Cashwalk, Township, Pic Stitch and Audiomack
Founded: 2007
Location: Financial District
What they do: Tapjoy aims to revolutionize the mobile advertising and app monetization industry. With offices located worldwide, the company helps brand advertisers reach their ideal mobile audience through rewarded video ads and their offerwall. Tapjoy also assists publishers with acquiring new users and monetizing their mobile apps. Since its inception, the company has had its SDK embedded in over 30,000 mobile apps, reaching over 800 million active users per month.
Who they work with: Amazon, Adidas, Epic Games, Groupon, Voodoo, Glu Mobile, 20th Century Fox and Hothead.
Founded: 2000
Location: San Francisco
What they do: Red Ventures is a portfolio of brands, platforms and strategic partnerships that build personalized experiences for users reading about health, travel, finances, entertainment and education. The company’s proprietary tech platform brings personalized ads and experiences to millions of users who rely on the company’s sites, like The Points Guy, Healthline, NextAdvisor, Bankrate and MyMove, for all their information.
Who they work with: Red Ventures maintains a portfolio of platforms and brands that connect millions of people with information about travel, finances, education and health.
Founded: 2011
Location: South Park
What they do: Fivestars has created a rewarding way to support local businesses. The company helps businesses create digital rewards programs that offer customers points and gifts for their purchases. Customers can sign up in-store or through their mobile app, providing businesses with accurate consumer information.
Who they work with: Statement Boutique, Lilac Spa, Twinkle Brown Sugar and The Simple Greek.
Founded: 1999
What they do: W2O Group helps healthcare organizations and care providers send clear messaging to clients through healthcare marketing and communication services.
Who they work with: The agency has experience working with clients ranging from pharmaceutical makers to digital health innovators, providing PR, branding, intelligence, science, marketing, advertising and additional solutions.
Founded: 2007
Location: SoMa
What they do: Demandbase specializes in account-based marketing strategies and B2B marketing performance. The company offers the only end-to-end ABM platform that enables B2B companies to identify, win and grow the accounts that matter most. Demandbase helps its clients reach their target accounts, accurately identify and segment anonymous visitors and provide their sales teams with the critical insights and personalized talking points required to close business faster.
Who they work with: DocuSign, Panasonic, Autodesk, Optymyze, Broadridge, Grainger, Adobe and NetApp.
Founded: 2012
Location: Financial District
What they do: Segment provides customer data infrastructure that helps businesses put their customers first. The company allows clients to collect, unify and connect their first-party data to marketing, analytics and data warehouse tools. Working with clients from over 70 countries, Segment helps companies achieve a common understanding of their users and activate their own data to create customer-first decisions and experiences. Within one API, their products enable companies to power their growth and analytics tools, easily transform and load customer data, customize their customer data pipeline, and more.
Who they work with: UP Entertainment, IBM, Shift, Bonobos, SpotHero, New Relic, Instacart, DigitalOcean and Glossier.
Founded: 2012
Location: China Basin
What they do: AdEspresso offers an easy-to-use and intuitive Facebook ads management and optimization tool. The tool allows customers to easily split test every aspect of their Facebook ads campaigns, so they can learn which creatives and demographic targets deliver the best results. AdEspresso offers marketing services that encompass video reviews, actionable tips, and expert strategy, as well as conversion tracking on external websites, allowing users to optimize by leads and customer acquisitions.
Who they work with: HubSpot, Microsoft, Kabbage, Teespring and Sugar and Crumbs.
Founded: 2010
Location: SoMa
What they do: Ampush is committed to connecting the right consumers with the right brands. The company combines proprietary technology, data, creative design, web development and business strategy to help brands find and activate the right customers. Ampush takes a custom approach to mobile, social, search, display and customer experience, while their data science, solutions engineering and creative teams enable profitable growth for their clients. The company also owns and operates content brands such as My Subscription Addiction and Insider Envy.
Who they work with: E-commerce companies, subscription food services, travel brands, insurance companies, media brands, and more.
Founded: 2008
Location: The East Cut
What they do: DoubleVerify powers the new standard of marketing performance, providing advertisers with clarity and confidence in their digital investment. The company creates value for media buyers and sellers by bringing transparency and accountability to the market, ensuring ad viewability, brand safety, fraud protection, accurate impression delivery and audience quality across campaigns. DoubleVerify’s easy-to-use platform simplifies companies’ optimization decisions, providing in-depth analysis and real-time visualization to drive their impression quality.
Who they work with: Companies associated with finance, telecommunications, automotive, retail, travel, pharmaceuticals, and more.
Founded: 2008
Location: Financial District
What they do: Factual is a location data company that helps marketers and their organizations use location to better understand, reach and engage customers. The company’s customers use their insights, targeting, measurement and data enrichment products to build and execute digital advertising strategies, measure success, understand audiences and support innovative business solutions. Factual also helps product owners and app developers use high-quality, global data on more than 130 million places and points of interest across 53 countries.
Who they work with: Facebook, TradeDesk Inc., Samsung, Uber, Shell, Apple, First Data and WeWork.
Founded: 2015
Location: The East Cut
What they do: Improvado is dedicated to helping marketers and agencies drive ROI by consolidating all of their data so they can make informed decisions about marketing campaigns. With the aim of simplifying marketing data, the company provides solutions that save organizations time and money, bringing data together within a single access point. Improvado is designed to take the pain out of data-driven marketing by aggregating, transforming and visualizing cross-channel marketing data in real-time.
Who they work with: Coca-Cola, Ancestry.com, Blink Fitness, Quibi, hims and Impulsive Marketing.
Founded: 2003
Location: South Beach
What they do: Mekanism is an independent, full-service advertising agency dedicated to communicating a brand’s purpose with ideas informed by data and rooted in human truths. The company focuses on creating unconventional campaigns for brands in conventional categories. Some of Mekanism’s past work includes a fan-made intro to Beyonce’s Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show, as well as a social media campaign on behalf of 20th Century Fox for the release of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”
Who they work with: Alaska Airlines, HBO, OkCupid, Zola, Peloton, Dropbox, Ben & Jerry’s and Charles Schwab.
Founded: 2016
Location: Embarcadero
What they do: New Engen is a multi-channel digital marketing platform dedicated to driving results and scaling customer growth. The company integrates proprietary, data-driven software with experienced marketers and data scientists to help clients solve complex digital marketing challenges. New Engen’s all-in-one platform gives marketers access to constant testing through an easy-to-manage interface at every stage of a campaign.
Who they work with: P&G, Rag & Bone New York, Milk, Mack Weldon, Dolls Kill and Los Angeles Clippers.
Founded: 2007
Location: Financial District
What they do: Taptica is a global end-to-end mobile advertising platform that helps brands reach their most valuable users with a wide range of traffic sources. The company powers data-driven solutions for stronger targeting and mobile campaign analyses. Taptica’s in-house creative studio supports campaigns, while the company runs rigorous A/B testing on design trends proven to work for every market, channel and industry.
Who they work with: E-commerce brands, digital media agencies, retailers, travel companies, and more.
