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Marin Software has proven to be a valuable tool for agencies and businesses across various industries. For example, both ethology and a …
Overview
What is Marin Software?
Marin Software is a cloud-based cross-channel advertising campaign management platform which integrates many tools and functions, and it is the name of the company in San Francisco that issues the software. Marin touts cross-display (including mobile-optimized) advertisement retargeting, social marketing…
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What is Marin Software?
Marin Software is a cloud-based cross-channel advertising campaign management platform which integrates many tools and functions, and it is the name of the company in San Francisco that issues the software. Marin touts cross-display (including mobile-optimized) advertisement retargeting, social…
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What is Marin Software?
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Marin Software Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Marin Software is a cloud-based cross-channel advertising campaign management platform which integrates many tools and functions, and it is the name of the company in San Francisco that issues the software. Marin touts cross-display (including mobile-optimized) advertisement retargeting, social marketing management, and many other tools to manage complex marketing and paid-advertising (PPC) efforts.
A free trial of this extensive platform is available. Marin Software maintains a client list with many familiar entitities, like GAP, Macy's, Comcast, Symantec, and many agencies as well.
StitcherAds and SunnyReports are common alternatives for Marin Software.
Reviewers rate Usability and Support Rating highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of Marin Software are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Marin Software has proven to be a valuable tool for agencies and businesses across various industries. For example, both ethology and a smaller agency have utilized Marin Software for client bid management, reporting, and account optimizations. These features have enabled them to save time and tailor campaigns to meet the specific needs of their clients. Vistaprint and MediaCom have also benefited from Marin Software's optimization capabilities, campaign management tools, and reporting functionalities for their search campaigns. Clients often choose Marin Software to maintain control over their data and benefit from lower fees compared to other platforms. The software's ability to manage campaigns, keywords, ads, bidding, ad positions, destinations, and budgets across departments provides convenience and efficiency. Additionally, Marin Software streamlines the management of SEM campaigns across multiple accounts with its automation features. Users appreciate the flexibility of the bid rules and reporting functionality within Marin Software, as it allows them to easily manipulate the platform to suit their specific needs. This has not only helped them save time but also reduced the reliance on multiple interfaces for bulk uploading and optimizations.
Easy-to-use Interface: Users have consistently praised Marin Software for its easy-to-use and intuitive user interface, with multiple reviewers stating that it allows them to quickly and efficiently perform tasks. The simplicity and efficiency of the interface were highlighted as advantageous features. Flexible Reporting Capabilities: Numerous reviewers have commended Marin Software's reporting capabilities for their flexibility, providing an in-depth analysis of the account at various levels. This feature was specifically mentioned by several users who appreciated the ability to customize views, create custom columns, and set dimensions and labels for filtering campaigns on a daily basis. Effective Conversion Tracking: Many users have highlighted Marin Software's ability to track conversions effectively as a strength. This feature was seen as a valuable tool for improving campaign performance and cost savings. Several users praised the system's bidding strategies based on position, conversions, or revenue as helpful tools in achieving better results.
Long Support Ticket Delays: Users have experienced long delays in getting their support tickets addressed, with some users mentioning that Marin's customer support could be more responsive and that account representatives and upper management were not always helpful in dealing with business-impacting issues.
Missing Data After Updates: Random missing data occurs after updates, causing frustration for some users who found errors in the system without clear explanations of what went wrong during uploads.
Difficulties in Pulling Reports: Pulling reports in the user interface can be difficult, especially when dealing with large reports or making changes to the user interface. Some users have experienced slow load times and updates, leading to delays in accessing important information.
Users have made several recommendations based on their experiences with Marin software. The most common recommendations are to improve the pricing structure of the software to lower fees. Users suggest using the software for businesses that do not have a large client with a huge eCommerce business. They also recommend that the software work on building out its social reporting and streamlining reporting and automation processes.
Furthermore, users find the user experience (UX) of Marin software to be bulky, cluttered, and frustrating to navigate at times. However, they value the smart sync capabilities of the software, which saves time and helps manage Google and Bing accounts effectively.
Overall, users recommend trying the software as it is an easy-to-use tool that brings everything together in one place. They suggest considering the size and complexity of the account being managed before using the software. Users also recommend utilizing the support and resources provided by Marin, such as scheduled reporting and custom support.
For smaller companies with lower spend requirements, users find Marin software great. They suggest using the chat feature or calling for urgent issues. They also recommend regularly speaking to the account manager and arranging calls with the Centre of Excellence Team to improve PPC account management.
Users suggest considering if the software is suitable for mid to large-sized businesses with developed SEM programs. They also recommend utilizing the dimensions options for tagging and organization of initiatives and accounts. While evaluating platforms, users think Marin should be considered as it continues to improve its offerings.
To solve frustrations and save time, users recommend giving Marin software a try. It is recommended for managing a large number of accounts or accounts that require conversion tracking, attribution modeling, or remarketing.
Users find Marin's customer support great and appreciate its easy-to-use interface for accessing campaign information quickly. They suggest voicing concerns to representatives and their superiors to find solutions to problems.
Moreover, users think Marin is a powerful tool for managing search advertising and recommend it for those who need a more sophisticated tool. They suggest watching the tutorial and training videos for better understanding.
In conclusion, users have provided valuable recommendations to improve Marin software's pricing structure, reporting capabilities, user experience, and support services.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 32)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
August 12, 2021
Marin Software is expensive and intuitive
I use Marin Software to manage and automate bidding for search marketing keywords and queries on Google and Bing. This is generally how I’ve always used it in the past and in other agencies. Marin software has always approached bidding with an easy-to-use interface, and smart algorithms dictate the process.
- Clean user interface
- Great support and sales
- Algorithms suit more typical accounts
- Not as customizable as other platforms
- Show the secret sauce in the bidding
- Does not easily integrate with other marketing platforms
February 02, 2018
Marin Software - alternative to DoubleClick
It's being used as a data management platform to keep the data from all publishers and data sources within one place, to optimize performance, use bidding strategies and track conversions. Out of 10 clients, we are using it on one significantly big client. Previously i've worked with Marin on another big client. The main reason for clients to choose the platform is that they don't want Google to own their data and also due to lower fees.
- Bidding strategies based on position or conversions, or revenue are very helpful for improving the performance of all campaigns and saving money
- It keeps the data easily accessible within one place. Pulling reports, being able to do a web query report, being able to integrate with many data sources makes the platform very useful. Also Marin reps are very helpful
- Marin offers a live chat, which is very helpful when you have an urgent question.
- Tracking templates are easily adjustable
- The filters on the columns don't always work properly
- The platform is sometimes very slow in updating the selected view
October 04, 2016
Marin Software Optimized Review
Marin was used for one of our larger financial services clients. It was mainly used by our pay per click (PPC) department, which at the time, was just me. Being a smaller agency with limited resources, having Marin helped manage the account optimizations and bidding across both AdWords and Bing. It saved us a ton of time. With the time saved on these such tasks, we were able to create more customized campaigns and pursue more cross-channel initiatives.
- The automated bidding features are great and work very well.
- Automation of tasks such as adding negative keywords or adding long tails via the search terms report saves a ton of time.
- Being able to make bulk changes across both AdWords and Bing at the same time.
- Preferring to make bulk changes with AdWords Editor, it would sometimes not upload correctly, which was frustrating.
- The reporting features weren't horrible, but I was expecting a little more. It's pretty time consuming to set up initially.
- A little slow when it comes to integrating new features - seems like it took a very long time to make a transition to final URLs and there was very little support during that time.
May 17, 2016
Marin Saves Time and Money
Marin is being used by our search team to assist with bidding and reporting. We will soon use Marin to buy FaceBook and Instagram display ads.
- Budgeting. Marin allows you to easily see budget and manage budget across engines. It is easy to shift budget from google and bing in real time.
- Bidding. We have found the bidding tool extremely successful across our clients to lower cost per conversions and save money.
- Marin's customer support could be more responsive.
It is used by our performance media department but only certain clients/teams are using Marin. I think it helps us report and stay organized for the larger clients that are spending $1MM or more a year.
- The overview tab is helpful for overall knowledge and quick updates for spend, ROI, etc.
- Ability to filter in endless ways.
- Reporting is easy to customize and can be pulled across clients.
- Adding dimensions makes your life easier and can be customized per client needs.
- We have a lot of issues with syncing data from Omniture with our Marin clients. Often times, data will be missing for certain days.
- Sitelinks are not the easiest to upload and view in Marin.
- Better download speeds for reporting would help us get more done in a day.
January 28, 2016
Probably best if you're managing high volume accounts
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Marin Software as a bid management tool across most clients' paid search accounts. The whole team uses it.
- Gives a complete overview across different paid search platforms e.g. it's easy to see how the same ad groups/keywords/ads etc., are working on different platforms.
- You can create bidding scenarios as a test before rolling them out.
- You have to learn to use the platform yourself & there's very little help with this from the customer support team.
- Account managers are very hands off and refer you back to customer support for everything.
- Strategic support would be helpful in terms of how to test and implement.
November 02, 2015
Newbie Review
Marin was used at my old job at MediaCom across all paid search teams of my client. It helped us manage the large amount of keywords and bids and easily pull pacing reports to present to the client.
- Bid Management
- Automated Reporting
- Implementing new technologies
October 27, 2015
Marin is Good Not Great
Paid search primarily uses Marin Software as a bid management tool for SEM campaigns.
- Easy to learn and use user interface.
- Very easy to make ad copy changes.
- Changes all across the board can be made quickly.
- Account representatives and upper management aren't always the most helpful when dealing with business effecting issues.
- Some small minor changes require a bulk sheet when they can easily be done in the interface if Marin had that ability.
- Doesn't seem like there is any progression by the Marin team to make updates to the tool.
October 23, 2015
Solid tool, but a lot of room for improvement..
Marin Software is being used across the SEM department. It helps streamline management of our clients' SEM campaigns.
- Bulk editing across engines. Can make large-scale account changes in a flash.
- Simple, easy-to-use interface. Makes training new employees on the tool a quicker process.
- Custom dimensions. Allows for flexibility in slicing and dicing your data in a way that's easily viewable directly in the tool.
- Ad extensions - the process for adding/editing ad extensions is cumbersome and needs to be completed in both the tool and the engines themselves. Not consistently supported between extension type or even engines. Process for editing is not nuanced and not intuitive.
- Pivoting features - it would be great if there were a pivot table-like functionality where you could look at aggregated data directly in the UI without having to pull a report.
- Budget pacing - no budget pacing functionality is available which is a key piece of our day-to-day campaign management.
- Bidding - bidding folders are clunky and do not support more nuanced/advanced calculations.
- Data by device - the current format is extremely clunky and doesn't easily translate into an Excel or pivot table. This functionality needs to be improved and more consistent with the typical views in the UI.
- Non-keyword based campaigns - the platform does not support direct UI management of non-KW based campaigns such as YouTube and GDN display.
Marin is our company's bid management software. It is used across departments and we strive to integrate Marin tracking into any new platform or product pitched to us. We use it to upload all our campaigns, keywords, ads, manage our bidding, determine our ad positions, set our destinations, and manage our budget. When it's time for reporting, whether ad hoc or monthly, we use Marin numbers as a rule.
- Marin is a self-serve platform. You can tailor your campaigns per your preference/convenience/needs. You can customize your view, see % changes, create custom columns depending on your Key Performance Indicators, and set any sort of dimensions and labels that will help you filter for your campaigns on a daily basis.
- Bidding and changes to destination URLs can be done through mass edits within the UI, without having to upload bulk-sheets. You push any changes from Marin to the Engines, and can also pull in your changes from Bing/AdWords engines by syncing your campaigns as well. The system will not publish anything you do not manually post until Midnight PST. You can copy paste straight from your excel bulksheet into the uploading tool (or upload the document through unicode text).
- The Administrative log keeps track of all changes, and keeps users (through their logins) accountable for any edits. This way, you can filter for your name, and find the edits that you made, just to double check your work, or to make sure you are publishing the correct changes. There is a keyword- group- and campaign-level history/settings log, where you can see the name of the user who created, edited, published, paused, activated, deleted, etc. any item.
- You can set up alerts that will help you manage accounts: anything from active campaigns with 0 ad copy, to finding keywords in low ad positions.
- If you push duplicate keywords, the system will reject them, keeping our accounts from getting clouded due to human error. There is no need to download existing keywords or groups and use their keyword or group IDs to make any edits--instead, editing is a breeze because the system detects the new changes automatically. The only need for IDs is when making edits to creative.
- The Marin (corporate) reps we deal with on a daily basis are atrociously condescending, difficult to deal with, and need to work on their transparency. We encounter attitude when requesting logins for new team members! However, the help desk is staffed by the friendliest professionals willing to help.
- While the filtering options (filter by account, campaign name, group name, keyword name, destination URL, dimension, strategy, model, etc) are very extensive, you cannot filter for 'either/or'. For example, if I want to filter down to a specific group of campaigns in the same account that contain "A", but do not contain "B", I cannot make this filter in the same area. I would have to find the common denominator between those campaigns on say, the "strategy level", and exclude the ones I do not want on a "model" level.
- Just like any other platform where corporate paid search accounts are managed, sometimes it takes a while to pull reports. However, I've worked across a few other search management platforms, and Marin speeds are tolerable.
April 29, 2015
Marin Software review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I used Marin while I was with Vistaprint . We used Marin software mainly for optimization and campaign management of Search campaigns.
- Both the client services and professional services teams were very helpful. Excellent support from account executives, analytics and professional services teams. During the initial integration, the professional services team worked all odd hours to accommodate integration with various countries. They also worked with us to accept all the customization that we requested for the data we were passing to them.
- Bidding algorithm is robust and the analytics team built us customized bidding monitoring tools . The bidding tool improved our efficiency quite a lot in all countries where the teams utilized the tool completely for bidding.
- Campaign management tools also vastly decreased the time that the team spent on campaign management. The account executives provided timely inputs on new tools and areas where we could automate further.
- While this is no reflection on the tool itself, it requires users to have a good understanding of the way the bidding algorithm works . Users cannot expect to be completely hands off in bidding but can expect good support from the client services team
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin is being used across the agency per the client's needs. When a client is onbaorded, we walk them through a scorecard of Kenshoo, Doubleclick and Marin and make our recommendation accordingly. We began to see Marin become the leader of the pack and roughly 60% of our clients were running on Marin.
- Found that Marin was surprisingly good at managing Local accounts within an MCA (anywhere from 50-60 accounts, depending on vertical/scale).
- Bid optimization was better and easier to setup than other platforms.
- Customizing and pulling reports was extremely intuitive.
- I mentioned in the previous answer that Marin was surprisingly good at managing Local accounts to scale, but that is in comparison to other platforms. For a long time, Marin didn't have the capability to make changes across accounts. Let's say you are managing 500 Local Automotive Dealerships. Each MCA has a limit of 2.5 million KWs (recommended). That means you would have to break those dealerships in to 7 or 8 unique MCAs. Managing that at scale can be difficult if you can't make changes across MCAs.
- They really need more integration with other vendors (ie., call tracking platforms). Yes, there are workarounds, but they are manual unless your agency has internal resources to lessen the pain points.
December 12, 2014
Marin Software Review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin Software allows for easy management across multiple accounts with automation features like scheduling, bid automation, and reporting.
- Reporting both automated and web query based reporting into excel
- Campaign management and ad, keyword, campaign scheduling
- Bid automation
- KPI reporting
December 09, 2014
Marin Software - Money Well Spent
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin Software is being used by the Paid Search department. It is used for two of the largest pay per click clients to manage daily tasks such as bid adjustments and negative keywords. It is also used more in depth to track conversions for the clients and for reporting uses, such as monthly and quarterly.
- Marin Software provides an in depth analysis of the account across all levels. Users can determine where search metrics came from based on device level, campaign level, keyword level and more. This is a strength for Marin Software because it allows users to find all the data it needs on an easy to use user interface.
- Marin Software successfully tracks conversions for the account. If the tracking codes are implemented correctly the user can find all the data they need from any conversion point they want. This is a strength for Marin Software because this is a solution that a lot of other paid search software don't offer.
- Marin Software allows the user to set up alerts based on activity in the account. For example, if the user wants a notification every time revenue drops they can set that up in the user interface. This is a strength for Marin Software because this solution allows the user to be on top of their account at all times.
- Marin Software could better implement the tracking code notifications so that the user knows they were implemented correctly. However, the user should be double checking on their work so this is a minor need for improvement.
- Marin Software could better implement pulling reports in the user interface. Sometimes it is hard to pull dates using the reporting tool.
- Marin Software could create more consistency between the tabs.
December 04, 2014
Old search guy's thoughts
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I liked Marin Software at MediaCom as it really help me update and maintain my client accounts and campaigns. As a search specialist, I was charged with bulk uploading and making optimizations with Marin. this really helped me to cut down the time of using multiple interfaces. It is currently being used across the department when the client approves the request.
- Bulk upload
- Campaign optimizations
- Insights
- Unclear mandatory columns in bulk uplaod feature
May 30, 2014
Marin is an Excellent Bid Management Tool.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin Software was being used by the Marketing department to manage digital media advertising, including bid management, tracking and account management. It addressed the target cost per acquisition problem with statistical significance.
- Ease of use - simple interface, user friendly.
- Data integrity
- Bidding tool
- Data/account aggregation
- Software integration with backend CRM took a bit too long, but it worked in the end.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin Software was being used across the whole organization for tracking and reporting in one place. It allowed account managers to be more efficient in management of paid search and allowed our client facing business strategists to find the information they need. This product filled the gap between the doers and the talkers.
- Quick, detailed, reoccurring reporting saved our strategists tons of time every week.
- It provided more more detailed reporting capabilities allowing more in depth analysis and insights.
- Allowing us to manage various platforms in one interface improved our performance and efficiency significantly.
- More customization to the reporting output such as allowing multiple logos and changing headers of reports
- More simplified bid rules - it gets very complicated and intimidating
May 17, 2014
Marin Review
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It was being used only within the digital marketing channel to support paid search.
- Reporting functionality
- Easy to use interface
- Ability to optimize to more than just one metric, ie traffic vs revenue, it should be able to optimize to a combination of metrics.
May 17, 2014
Marin
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used Marin at iProspect on many of our large accounts. Personally I used Marin software for daily bid changes and ad creation within both Bing and Google ads. Marin was a huge help to make changes quickly and efficiently within Bing Adcenter and Google AdWords. Marin also provides several steps of checks and balances so you make the correct changes without screwing things up.
- Bid changes were very easy
- Creating keywords was seamless as you just uploaded a spreadsheet with all info
- Ad creation was easy to either create a new ad or duplicate old ads for small changes
- The color scheme on the dashboard was hard to read
- Sometimes errors come through without explanation of what went wrong in the uplaod
- The training was long and not too helpful
May 16, 2014
How Marin is Helping Us Kill It in Media
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We've implemented Marin's technologies across the majority of all of our client accounts. As an agency it has helped improve efficiency and reduction of human error allowing our teams to spend less time in reporting, bulk sheet work and QA and more time on strategy, planning and implementation.
- Automated Bidding let's us use the same logic and formulas we would use to make optimizations while implementing it across every single keyword, something a large team couldn't execute flawlessly at the same frequency.
- Cross Publisher tracking and optimizations are a huge time saver
- Dimensions, Reporting and other features call out areas for improvement and allow quick fixes
- It would be really nice to have a solution to some annoying tracking problems like Bing revenue data and side by side publisher/marin tracker data.
- Allowing the upload of DSP or other non-supported platform data would let us use Marin as a reporting suite
May 16, 2014
It saves so much time
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Marin Software to manage cross channel campaigns, including Google, Bing and more. The tool helps us to manage all campaigns in one place, and compare different publisher's performance side by side.
- Bulk upload to edit multiple campaigns, ad groups, keywords...
- Group campaigns in bidding folders and set your own bidding strategy based on business goals
- Group campaigns in dimensions to compare performance and implement AB tests
- Would be greater if Marin can segment out data by device. Eg: compare CTR by desktop and mobile and see trend over time
- The ability to view different dimensions side by side in the Dimensions tab
- The ability to view graph for filtered data
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Marin software to manage complex paid search campaigns for more than one dozen clients.
- Unified Google and Bing performance results
- Fast keyword filtering based on criteria such as impressions, average CPC, rank, etc.
- Bulk keyword and ad text upload
- More drag and drop functionality. For example, the ability to copy or move keywords and ad text between ad groups or campaigns.
- More options to customize charts and graphs to track progress over time.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin Software is being used by Vistaprint to manage paid search bids across a wide portfolio of products. We have millions of keywords and it would be impossible to manage all of the bids manually. Marin also makes many account maintenance & optimization functions (adding new keywords, ad copy testing, etc.) easier.
- Adding keywords
- Running ad copy tests
- Managing bids across a large portfolio of products
- Some elements of the interface are confusing.
May 12, 2014
Review
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin Software was used for the sales strategy to manage the incoming leads. It assisted the communication efforts of all team members within the sales floor to keep up to date with the lead generation on a daily basis. Marin Software was simple and easy to use, which made the system very appealing and efficient.
- Manage Lead Progression
- Simplicity
- Efficiency
- None
May 09, 2014
Natalia's Review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Marin software was being used to effectively manage pay per click accounts for several clients. It was only being used by the SEM department. It addressed the problem of achieving desired metrics in a manageable way.
- One platform to manage Google, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook pay per click accounts
- Ability to automate PPC optimization
- Advanced reporting and access for clients dashboards
- Easier optimization concepts
- Ability to connect to second tier search engines
- Ability to easily find link between SEO and SEM efforts