AppNexus vs. Google Ad Manager

AppNexus is well suited to use for programmatic campaigns that we have to launch for clients. Everything from standard display, native, high-impact, and video can run within the platform. Our trading team is well experienced within AppNexus (APN), and it's typically the first DSP they learn when starting.

Incentivized

It is only suited for marketing. Make sure you have analytics on your site to track the people coming, final sales, and conversions because it is at it's best when you can use it to really read and understand the data at hand. Google Ads does everything it needs to in ads, and you don't need to be an expert to begin with it. However, I would not just tell someone to "go create an account" if they know very little about digital ads. Consult with someone first. It can be a little daunting if you were to do that!

Incentivized

• As per my experience they have strong support personnel. Solving the issues as and when required.
• We can solve certain issues like campaign performance, inventory optimization and more with the help of AppNexus wiki. We get all the required information in the Wiki itself.
• They have given the right platform to both buyers and sellers to workout and meet their digital marketing needs and goals.

• Hyper targeting - I love how we can target, analyze, and then hyper target [advertisements] to our audiences to be able to hyper target the audiences that convert best. [Audiences besides] Google understands them, but also demographics, locations, search terms, and more.
• Advanced reporting - Without Google's seemingly endless ways to read and break down reports, we would not be able to best make decisions to maximize ROI.
• Strong conversion algorithm updates - The algorithm has become impressively strong for 'maximized conversions' and 'smart' campaigns. [That's] coming from someone who hated these portions of the algorithm until about 2019 where the updates (and continued updates) have worked incredibly well for these algorithms' purpose.

Incentivized

• Better visualization and dashboard will make it a perfect product.
• The product concept is hard to master. More video training in addition to the interactive training may help.
• More report templates will make my life easier since it takes time to build one.

Incentivized

• Sometimes it can bog down and crash. This is rare, but it is processing a lot of steps/changes all at once and it's not expected to be perfect.
• Being able to quickly filter by campaign types would be nice (PPC/Display/Video Pre-roll). Our fix is to run these campaigns in totally separate accounts, so there is no overlapping in reporting/etc. This helps with seeing stats clearly without having to filter constantly.
• It could be visually prettier.

Incentivized

I love almost everything about AppNexus because I feel like the user data is easy to track because of the identifiers, you can see which adverts got clicked and which were ignored. We can track the location of the ad on the page fold and this makes it so much easier for future campaigns. The only thing I don't like is that the data is only kept for a year, and I'd like it for a longer period of time

I think it's useful for our team and we rely on it to improve our business. It is within our budget also. Although we still will need an approval from the upper-level management team, I don't see any problem with that

Incentivized

Because I think the interface is kind of confusing at the beginning and it confuses you a lot.

Incentivized

Love the product and how the GUI is as it is user friendly. When working with the product it is better to have some knowledge of what ad's you want to deploy where so that it is easier to use and move forward.

Incentivized

I've never had any problems with appnexus - the software is always available

Incentivized

Yes, everything works great in that sense

Incentivized

Because the support team does give you support, they take 24hrs to get back to you but once they open a ticket they focus on resolving the issue for you. My only problem is that you don't have a specific account representative assigned to you.

Incentivized

I could say a lot about this topic. As an agency, we get a new [representative] to talk to almost every quarter to go over select accounts and the campaigns within. Most of the time, these [educated representatives], don't provide any new feedback, or I just simply [disagree] with their approach. This is not all the time however. I have learned a lot from a rare few, [individuals] that have given me new strategies and access to betas early on. The other side of support, is the [overseas support platform]. [It] is usually not very helpful, but you can [emphasize] issues and they can research [them]. The Google Tag Implementation team is pristine though. When you need them, you need to set an appointment, which is usually 2 weeks out; they are so over-my-head intelligent, I've never had a bad experience with them and whenever I needed them for a fix, they solved it [within] the first call.

Incentivized

Online training are not user friendly and not easy to understand

Incentivized

Appnexus is less retargeting-focused than Criteo. Their solutions are more focused on building awareness and not so much on the bottom of the funnel and on conversions. Regarding MoPub, their focus is on mobile, and Appnexus, even though it has a very strong mobile set of solutions, is specialized on CTV and other media channels.

Incentivized

As I alluded to earlier, you kind of have to be on Google if you want to search marketing. I've tried Bing Ads and I just don't see the same volume or quality. With dwindling targeting abilities on social media sites like Facebook, Google is still tall and mighty and helps us with intent-based targeting rather than just interest-based targeting.

Incentivized

Because it's a great DSP but not the best

Incentivized

• After using AppNexus for our banner ads, which used to be a simple task became a complex one and we lost time building it out.
• After realizing there is no dedicated way to contact AppNexus for troubleshooting and exchanging many emails going into long threads we lost even more time.
• Our return on investment was poor with AppNexus due to the vastness of the platform and poor support experience limiting what we could do and losing time.

Incentivized

• It has made the data from this accessible for all of my team to see.
• The ability to make changes can be bad - if the team does not agree.
• Getting current results lets us decide what needs to be changed and take their advice to see how things could improve.

Incentivized