Adobe Marketing Cloud vs. Smart AdServer

If you have a rather large budget and/or several clients to take advantage of the AMC, you would likely benefit from its all-in-one solutions. There are a myriad of excellent tools for digital marketing professionals to take advantage of within the suite, and creating a campaign becomes much more manageable for collaboration and execution through to reporting thanks to the suite's vertically integrated nature.

Incentivized

Smart AdServer is great for a marketing department, to track stats and clicks of their audience. It's a great way to engage the client without actually engaging them. We use it all the time to monitor where they're going, what they're interested in, and how engaging our posts are. I would say it's probably not a good idea for a smaller organization, as one social media manager could work it all out

Incentivized

• Content Analysis - Between the Pages report and the participation metrics which show what percentage of conversions a page was involved with, you get an excellent analysis of what content is important and effective, and what is not. With the ability to add up to ten metrics side by side, drill downs, and power tools like Ad Hoc Analysis, you will know exactly where you need better content.
• Pathing - Adobe Analytics captures every single path of every single visit of every single visitor and puts it at your fingertips. There are tools to aggregate common paths so you find out how frequent they are, lots of good page flow reports, and tools to pick out specific paths that will keep you from being overwhelmed. This has been absolutely invaluable to us as we have learned about how our customers are using our sites and which paths are leading to exits rather than converions.
• Customization - There are so many custom metrics and dimensions you can add and you can create segments based on all of them, along with the out of the box metrics and dimensions. You truly get an implementation that is specific to your company, your needs, your strategy, and your site.

Incentivized

• It is easy to use, with functionality covering mobile, desktop and even tablet. I'm always on the go, so it's nice to be able to access my server from pretty much anywhere.
• It has a wonderful intuitive user interface, every facet of this is designed and thought over, so it's easy to navigate around the program.
• It offers a free trial so there's no real commitment if you just want to try it out, which is nice.

Incentivized

• Customer services could be improved for smaller clients. Adobe Marketing Cloud provides great support for most of its customers, however, it may not work well enough for smaller engagements.
• Adobe could offer multiple price options based on the usage, which is missing at the moment.

Incentivized

• I would like a more in-depth look at my traffic stats. I can see clicks, where my audience is going, but I'd like maybe some kind of perspective into who my audience is (18-24, adult, etc).
• Constant updates. It's nice that they're always looking to update program, but the update can kinda get in the way of my work sometimes.
• I'd prefer it if were a little cheaper – the free trial is nice, but getting my superiors to sign off on the cost (they're a bit old school) is a bit tough sometimes.

Incentivized

Although a powerful tool, Google Analytics has been catching up in capabilities and is much simpler to use. As analytics move to the spotlight, more sections in a company want to have access to it. However, creating straightforward reports/dashboards and sharing them with different groups is not a strength of Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Incentivized

In comparison to other services, Adobe is particularly robust, and the platform is better suited to customers with a high level of maturity in the digital environment, who need a platform to overcome and solve day-to-day problems.

Incentivized

Honestly, you can use either/or. I'm all about AdServer right now because since Adobe has implemented their cloud service, they've gotten more expensive. Smart AdServer is just one cost, and it's cheaper than Adobe Cloud

Incentivized

• It has helped us track our ROI better and see costs versus revenue coming in directly from emails.
• A/B testing is very helpful to ensure the best email is being chosen to get sent out.
• Our deliverability has improved a lot.

Incentivized

• It's helped my organization better manage our traffic flow.
• It's reduced the amount of work on our social media manager.
• It's helped my organization get a better perspective on our clientele - where they're going, what they're interested in, it's been a great asset to our business.

Incentivized