Case Study: Kelly Scott Madison achieves 40% lower CPA and 198% traffic growth with DataXu

KSM grows business by bringing programmatic in-house

Chicago-based Kelly Scott Madison (KSM) is an independent advertising agency that struggled with inefficient, opaque campaign buys—relying on ad networks for scale because many client budgets couldn’t secure preferred publisher pricing. RFPs were time-consuming and, once orders were placed, KSM had no way to verify proper setup or optimization, risking network margins being prioritized over client goals. After success with DataXu on a managed basis, KSM brought the DataXu programmatic platform in-house to gain efficiency, transparency and self-serve trading capabilities.

KSM built an in-house programmatic trading desk on the DataXu platform and quickly drove measurable results: a 40% reduction in CPA and a 198% increase in traffic (against a 20% goal), meeting or exceeding client benchmarks across verticals. The platform also delivered stronger analytics and faster audience testing, enabled transparent client reporting, became a competitive differentiator in pitches, freed the team for strategic work, and helped KSM win and scale more business.

Kelly Scott Madison

Kay Wesolowski

VP, Digial Media Director