AppNexus vs. Skai

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AppNexus
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
AppNexus AppNexus offers online auction infrastructure and technology for data management, optimization, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated advertising campaigns. It integrates with advertising sources including Google's DoubleClick, Microsoft's AdECN, and aggregators.[3]N/A
Skai
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Skai (formerly Kenshoo) is a cross-channel advertising solution for search marketing, social media and online advertising. The product aims to give advertisers and agencies the control and automation needed to make better investment decisions across search marketing and online advertising.
$10,000
Starting Price
Pricing
AppNexusSkai
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Kenshoo
$10,000
Starting Price
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AppNexusSkai
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
AppNexusSkai
Ad Network Integration
Comparison of Ad Network Integration features of Product A and Product B
AppNexus
8.5
8 Ratings
14% above category average
Skai
7.1
10 Ratings
4% below category average
Data Transfer8.06 Ratings8.510 Ratings
DSP integration9.08 Ratings5.75 Ratings
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
AppNexus
8.0
8 Ratings
2% above category average
Skai
6.1
11 Ratings
25% below category average
Ad campaign creation8.08 Ratings7.611 Ratings
Ad deployment9.07 Ratings7.611 Ratings
Display advertising7.07 Ratings4.310 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation8.07 Ratings4.810 Ratings
Sequence targeting8.07 Ratings6.39 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AppNexus
8.2
9 Ratings
6% above category average
Skai
7.3
12 Ratings
6% below category average
Ad dashboards9.09 Ratings7.612 Ratings
Ad performance reports7.09 Ratings9.812 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking8.08 Ratings6.712 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting8.08 Ratings7.611 Ratings
Cross-channel ad management9.08 Ratings5.810 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization8.08 Ratings6.211 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AppNexusSkai
Small Businesses
Google Ad Manager
Google Ad Manager
Score 8.6 out of 10
Google Ad Manager
Google Ad Manager
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 8.1 out of 10
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 8.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
AppNexusSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(16 ratings)
9.2
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
4.0
(6 ratings)
7.8
(3 ratings)
Usability
5.0
(2 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
3.6
(1 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Online Training
2.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
4.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AppNexusSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
AppNexus
Appnexus is specifically well suited for CTV campaigns. They have the full technology stack to help you scale campaigns in any format, whether you need a lot of volume in traditional formats like banners and interstitials or if you need high-impact formats like video and other alternatives. Appnexus has a very strong set of unique publishers which makes it a great DSP for branding campaigns.
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Skai
Kenshoo would be a good tool if your client has extremely high budgets with low CPCs. For small, geo-specific accounts the capabilities have not be built out. Therefore, the tool could not budget pace our 250+ accounts. The main reason we had chosen Kenshoo was because of its budget pacing capabilities. Unfortunately, it did not save us time and created additional budget pacing issues with over pacing our accounts.
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Pros
AppNexus
  • 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.
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Skai
  • Kenshoo Search bid policies make bid optimization easy and automated. Optimizations are based off of sophisticated algorithms rather than simple bid rules (although Kenshoo Search also offers these). There are many different policies to choose from. Simply choose your type of goal (example: awareness vs. ROI), choose your metric, and assign to your campaign(s) and/or account.
  • Kenshoo Search reporting offers a large selection of reporting templates that are easily exported to Microsoft Excel. In addition, they also offer dashboard reporting with a variety of different widgets that are easily customizable. This feature makes it extremely easy to view metrics that may normally require manual excel work.
  • Kenshoo Search has a Desktop Editor tool similar to Google Adwords Editor that makes bulk optimizations easy and time efficient. This is a huge resource win for me and my team!
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Cons
AppNexus
  • The platform is incredibly complex and requires a great deal of understanding of how the platform works that caught us by surprise.
  • The wiki is not enough and when we resorted to reaching out to AppNexus it was a nuisance of having several emails going back and forth.
  • No phone support is offered which would have made several things easier than exchanging confusing emails.
  • Video inventory is still not implemented.
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Skai
  • When working with large accounts, such as mine, the tool can be slow. There are a lot of times where the editor tool will freeze, and I'm not sure if I need to reboot or exit the tool. I wish it was a smooth process, much like the AdWords editor tool.
  • Kenshoo support can be slow to respond at times. In the ticketing industry, things are very much based on time of day or time of the week. If the product is down or not functioning during an on-sale or a major event, it can be difficult to get tech support on the phone.
  • Their reporting really doesn't set them a part from the competition. I've used social tools such as Marin and a few others, and they're all pretty similar as far as reporting. If possible, I think you're better off using Google Analytics for reporting, just so you have a common denominator.
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Likelihood to Renew
AppNexus
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
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Skai
We received great customer service from the Kenshoo Social team, they listen to feedback, and truly work to get things fixed. The tool works well and they are always working on ways to improve it to help improve performance for our clients
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Usability
AppNexus
Because I think the interface is kind of confusing at the beginning and it confuses you a lot.
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Skai
Set-up like other marketing platforms. If you know Google Ads, you know Kenshoo
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Reliability and Availability
AppNexus
I've never had any problems with appnexus - the software is always available
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Skai
No answers on this topic
Performance
AppNexus
Yes, everything works great in that sense
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Skai
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
AppNexus
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.
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Skai
Very responsive and bring fast answers for problems
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Online Training
AppNexus
Online training are not user friendly and not easy to understand
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Skai
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
AppNexus
The TTD platform seems to have better CTV/OLV inventory, so that is typically preferred over AppNexus (APN). Usually, if clients have an internal desk, they will use TTD, which can often lead to us bidding against them, which is also another benefit of running campaigns within AppNexus (APN). Google DSP is typically used to increase the scale for display and build larger re-messaging pools.
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Skai
I think Skai beats the competitors with its advanced bidding management system, this is a unique feature of them that if you implement properly, your accounts will surely benefit from this, especially if you have tons of data that the algo can learn from and optimize accordingly. In terms of reporting, they are the best we've got so far, scheduling options are great.
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Scalability
AppNexus
Because it's a great DSP but not the best
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Skai
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
AppNexus
  • The 1 USD audit fee makes it very hard to A/B test creatives and improve performance, hurting ROI.
  • We have been able to reach some users that we weren't able to get before, increasing spending, which is good for ROI.
  • We can run campaigns on TV, which is a big boost for the business, and very ROI positive.
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Skai
  • ROI is harder to track due to reporting/column & time frame default tech in my humble opinion but generally better results when compared to other products
  • Since the interface is difficult to navigate and paid search is a reactive medium, can produce barriers to change.
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