Adpearance Reviews

3.6

66% would recommend to a friend

(93 total reviews)

David Steinberg & Aaron James

65% approve of CEO

60% positive business outlook

Adpearance has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 93 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Adpearance employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

93 reviews
2.0
8 Mar 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The company gives a lot of people their first job out of college. 99% of people who work here are in their 20’s and the older people have been here for years and are in their late 30s. With this comes a fun but hyper-competitive atmosphere. Executives are smart, focused, and truly care about their employees. Advancement opportunities in a quickly growing company if you and your manager are friends.

Cons

First off, management asks us to write reviews on this site and our HR dept and middle management consistently posts fake reviews on Glassdoor. Notice how all of the reviews have very similar pros and cons. They caught on to the fact that people were noticing and tried to space them out more and use different tones/people to write reviews. Secondly, Adpearance is positioning themselves for an exit and it is frequently communicated at company-wide meetings. This in turn has made them sacrifice the quality that made them a successful company. Very money hungry and those that bring in money rather than those that do great work are rewarded. Foureyes, Adpearances hallmark product eats up all the resources and is the future of the company. If you are associated with this product, life is great. Every other part of the company isn’t given any love. Third, a new CFO was brought in and the company is going through a giant restructuring to position to sell. This has led to trimming things that were vital to company culture and growth. No more free lunches, no baked good, no company activities. Feels very “eastern block” and “dreary”. Finally, middle management is terrible. While having the average age of the company super young gives a fun culture, your manager will be someone who is 24 and has relatively zero management experience. Outside management isn’t brought in ever. Therefore, as expected with young employees, favoritism and relationships between managers and subordinates is rampant and leads to an unprofessional environment.

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Adpearance Response
8y
Thanks for the review. We’ll be the first to admit that we suggest employees submit reviews—it’s a best practice that we use in our client work too. But, as evidenced by your post, we never attempt to control the content.
1.0
15 May 2017

Inefficient and Poor Management

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

• Opportunity to interact with different teams during company-wide events (if you're not swamped with work I guess). • Learn and understand the "agency-life." I loved the fast-pace and you'll certainly get to experience that thrill at Adpearance.

Cons

• Immaturity and unprofessionalism in handling issues at hand (i.e. missing client deadlines, poor product/service quality, misleading clients) by management, as a result... • Don't expect a healthy work-life balance. I get it if you need to stay late occasionally - that happens - but, when it's an every day occurrence, and it's not just you, then there's a problem. • Lip service is paid in abundance here - e.g., even if you schedule a one-on-one with your manager and bring up important issues to discuss, it will either be used against you in future meetings or you'll get some nods and nothing will change. • Most of my coworkers were in their early to mid twenties, which can be great for making bonds/friends, but it could also mean that they have very little experience handling issues maturely and professionally. • If diversity in the work place is something you value, I wouldn't exactly recommend Adpearance, but here's to hoping that might change.

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Adpearance Response
9y
Thank you for providing a review of your time with Adpearance. We're always looking to improve and rely on honest feedback from our employees in order to do so. We are sorry to hear you were unhappy with some aspects of your experience and wish you all the best in your career.
2.0
25 Feb 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Awesome people work there: I made lasting friendships with many coworkers and really enjoyed collaborative work whenever it was a possibility. -Good culture and camaraderie in the workplace. Laughs, lunches with coworkers and the general high IQ of the people working there all boost morale and make people happy to tackle their work efficiently. -Lots of potential for learning new skills. As the company is young and ever-changing, the ambitious and well-directed can stake out a niche that works for them and their career goals. -Looks good on the resume and the generalist nature of the positions give you experience in both client facing roles, internal strategy and various aspects digital marketing.

Cons

-High turnover itself is a constant problem: competent people leave or are mysteriously fired and replaced with fresh college graduates to take their spot. Lots of lost time on training, errors by newbies put team leads in awkward places. Clients expect perfection that can't be faked with 20 hours of hurried training. -Pay is low, even for traditionally better paying roles like web developers or account directors. -Management and company hierarchy is murky at best, totally broken at worst: you're never sure who you boss is or who you're reporting to. Employees report to mysterious sub managers who report to team leads but the team lead is tasked with evaluating employees. -High expectations coupled with low pay lead to working a lot for little compensation, in turn affecting morale. While the employee handbook states that 40 hour weeks are standard and that overtime should be cleared with team leads, many people work long hours to get their work done without this. -Politics and lack of formal HR dept. results in uneven punishment/reward for employees. Passive-aggressiveness hampers direct, in-team communication and leads to occasional animosity and gossip. Work review process can be painful and nitpicky - superiors will ask you to go back and fix extremely minor typos when reviewing work leading to workflow disruption, distraction and sometimes bad blood. -The actual work is generally thankless, free of ownership, plentiful and relatively boring and repetitive. Revolving door of clients, coworkers and company policies makes workers feel insecure about their future with the company, hurting morale and productivity. While this is hard to beat at a marketing company, its exacerbated by long hours and other company shortcomings.

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Adpearance Response
10y
Thanks for your perspective. We know the expectations at Adpearance are high and that we're not the right fit for everyone. To address your perception of the revolving door of clients and coworkers, we pride ourselves on maintaining retention rates for both employees and clients that are well above agency averages. We know that fit for both employees and clients can change over time, so we don't lock anyone into long-term contracts or agreements. While we constantly want to improve, we're happy with historical retention metrics that we've observed.
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Glassdoor has 96 Adpearance reviews submitted anonymously by Adpearance employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Adpearance is right for you.