Why choose an agency over programmatic?

When reach is not the constraint. If your roles need persuasion, creative and follow-up rather than more job-board impressions, managed campaigns tend to outperform programmatic distribution.

Leadstars vs Appcast

Q: Do you use Appcast benchmark data?

We reference it the way the rest of the industry does. The Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report is the standard source for cost-per-applicant expectations.

These are two different products. Appcast buys job advertising media programmatically at very large scale. Leadstars runs campaigns for staffing firms on both the candidate and the client side.

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Appcast of Leadstars?

Appcast is a programmatic job advertising platform: it buys clicks and applications across publishers on a pay-per-applicant basis and publishes the Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report, now in its 10th edition and built on more than 302 million clicks, more than 27 million applications and roughly 1,200 employers. That data set is the category reference and their media-buying scale is far larger than ours. Leadstars is not an ad-buying platform. We are an agency that builds and runs campaigns for staffing firms, with a guarantee on the agreed lead volume and first delivery within 7 days.

Last updated: 4 September 2026

Honest comparison

Them versus us

Key takeaways

Appcast's Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report, 10th edition, covers 302M+ clicks, 27M+ applications and around 1,200 employers. It is the industry reference for cost-per-applicant benchmarks.
Appcast's media-buying scale across job publishers is far larger than any agency's.
Leadstars is a different category: campaign execution, including paid social creative and client-side outreach, not programmatic media buying.
Many staffing firms run both: programmatic for job-board reach, an agency for social creative and client demand.

What Appcast does better

Data and benchmarks. The Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report is the reference other people quote, including us. When you need to know what a cost per applicant should be for a light industrial role in a given month, that is where the number comes from.

Media scale and mechanics. Programmatic bidding across a very large publisher network, with pay-per-applicant pricing and automatic budget shifting, is something an agency running managed campaigns cannot match on reach or unit economics for high-volume, easy-to-fill roles.

Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report, 10th edition: 302M+ clicks, 27M+ applications, ~1,200 employers.
Programmatic job advertising across a large publisher network, priced per applicant.
Better fit for high-volume hourly requisitions where job-board reach is the constraint.

Where Leadstars is different

Leadstars is an execution agency for staffing firms only: staffing agencies, contract staffing and staff augmentation firms, direct hire and executive search. We run two systems side by side. The Job Acquisition Machine fills orders with applicants through paid social, AI sourcing and multi-channel job distribution. The Client Acquisition System books meetings with hiring companies through ICP outreach and B2B advertising. Most vendors in this category serve only the candidate side, because their buyers are corporate talent acquisition teams rather than staffing firms.

The second difference is commercial. We work on a retainer with an implementation fee and guarantee the agreed lead volume, with first delivery within 7 days of launch. That is a delivery commitment on leads and applicants, not on hires: fill rate and time to fill depend on your recruiters, your bill rate and your client, and we do not claim them.

Staffing firms only - no corporate talent acquisition departments, no other verticals.
Candidate demand (applicants, cost per applicant) and client demand (sales meetings) from the same team.
Retainer plus implementation fee, with a guarantee on the agreed lead volume.
Paid social execution depth: Meta and TikTok creative built for hourly and light industrial audiences, not only job-board media buying.

Side by side

	Leadstars	Appcast
Category	Agency running campaigns	Programmatic job advertising platform
Main channels	Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, email outreach, job distribution	Job boards and publisher network
Creative production	Yes, ad creative built per audience	Job ad distribution rather than social creative
Client-side lead generation	Yes	No, candidate media only
Published benchmark data	No, we publish our own campaign results only	Yes, the category reference

What we do not know

None of this is public. We deliberately leave it blank rather than fill it with estimates.

Pricing and contract terms: not published. Ask the vendor directly.
Client counts, headcount and revenue: not public. We publish no estimates here.
Performance claims: judge them on the case studies each company publishes itself, not on our reading of them.

Honest comparison

When Leadstars is not the right fit

Four or five situations where another agency serves you better. That is not modesty, it is the shortest route to a useful conversation.

You are an employer hiring for yourself, not a staffing firm. We only work with staffing agencies, contract staffing firms, direct hire and executive search firms.

You want a self-serve platform your team logs into and operates. We run campaigns as an agency; a platform seat is a different purchase.

You need a full US website rebuild, brand identity or long-form content program. Buy that from a full-service agency.

You have no one to work the leads. Guaranteed lead volume is worthless without a sales process behind it.

Frequently asked questions

Not really. Appcast is a programmatic media-buying platform for job advertising; Leadstars is an agency that builds and runs campaigns. Firms often use both.

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