Basis from Basis Global Technologies (formerly Centro) is a programmatic ad buying platform supporting digital advertising buying and placement across varying channels. Since the acquisition of SiteScout the platform also contains technology from the SiteScout AdServer.
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Cheetah Digital
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Designed for high-volume, cross-channel campaigns, Cheetah Digital is used by marketers to deliver highly personalized, contextual communications across various channels including email, SMS, push, mobile wallet, direct mail, and social.
I would recommend Basis [DSP] for specific clients. Boutique agencies that do not require very complex programmatic solutions are the best fit. It is not very well suited for very big clients that want to run multicountries campaigns with objectives that are very much performance focused. Their dashboard is very good and the platform is easy to use so new entrants to programmatic will find it very useful.
I think CheetahMail, being one of the main ESPs in the market, is a quality choice. However, I would suggest that it's really only valuable for a bit larger of an organization, generally having staff of 100+ and revenues in tens of millions -- this is mainly to justify the amount of investment required, so may be cost-prohibitive to some. You also need to make sure that you understand the entire "level of support" you will gain through your specific contract.... the key is understanding what types of resources are within your organization (who's doing the coding? who comes up with the next campaign? What's the overall strategy?) Depending on these questions and resources, may help determine your final needs from a services point of view. CheetahMail can provide a wealth of various services specific to needs (and changes over time as your business changes), but a clear understanding of what you have before you bring them on will really help getting up and running quickly. Also be sure to truly understand the costs for the initial integrations, setups, IP senders, etc.
Basis DSP does a great job of keeping their clients informed of new and upcoming features on their platform. They regularly host webinars to help keep their clients informed of what's up and coming and how to use new features.
Client relations with Basis is incredible. They're available on a regular, consistent basis. In addition, they check in throughout the on boarding process and beyond to help their clients understand they system.
The analytics tracking capabilities built into Basis DSP is fantastic. They provide many different options on how to pull and organize reports for clients.
The additional training offered through Centro Institute is fantastic, especially for beginners. Going to Chicago and training at the headquarters for a couple of days has helped with my company's success in building a programmatic advertising clientele list and building successful campaigns.
More detail on how and when the exchanges review submitted ad tags would help us set better expectations for our clients and client success teams during launch. Often a delay in ad approvals can result in lagging campaign metrics that must be made up later, often at the cost of performance.
More predictive tools / the ability to stop a campaign from bidding when a certain impression threshold is reached (in addition to the dayparting and budget rules that are currently in place and used for every campaign).
For some reports, such a geolocation reports, being able to visualize it on a map of some kind would make the data export more meaningful and less manual for our operations and client success teams seeking to explain to clients where their campaign was exposed.
The organization of CheetahMail could at times be better, as you create more and more mailings, they just pile up in a long list. It would be useful to be able to create folders to store specific mailings in. (ex. editorial, newsletters, marketing, etc.)
As I have begun exploring competitors, I've come to realize that every competitor offers so much more functionality and integration than CheetahMail does. When we first signed our contract, CheetahMail was much more innovative and at the forefront of email. Since being bought out by Experian, we've seen a huge decline in service and innovation. They have laid off much of their staff and moved their account representatives to Costa Rica. They also heavily rely on on third parties which you will have to pay large amounts of money for while other Email Service Providers have integrated new technologies into their platform. You will get more for your money going to a different email service such as Responsys, Silverpop, Listrak and the like,
CheetahMail has a high learning curve to master and requires a lot of backend work with tech teams to set up. Navigation is not the best and everything that should be automated is still extremely manual.
We have a dedicated account rep. She makes it seem like we are her only client, she is very responsive, helps each time we have a question and understands our campaign goals. Anytime we need support, our rep is available either email or call and if she is not going to be available, she will let us know ahead of time to provide back up and inform them of our current campaigns so they can better assist us.
I've been very satisfied with the support given by Cheetah, they are always asking and looking for areas where they can help you improve upon your business. They are very knowledgeable and are able to quickly find any answer you are looking for.
There are a ton of tactics and strategy to implement in the DSP platform. There isn't really a selection of the different types of campaigns or tactics to choose from, you just have to learn as you go. Once you figure out the strategy and goal of the campaign it is very easy to implement the tactic and to achieve its goals.
Advangelist, StackAdapt, Simplifi, Trade Desk, Media Math - overall most of the other platforms we reviewed were perfectly fine and can get the job done quite well. We have mostly stuck with basis because of the relationship that we have, the fact that they have continued to provide stellar support, and have a platform that delivers on everything they promise.
I believe Cheetah DMS is a bit more complete and a lot more complex to use than Mailchimp. Mailchimp was born as a mail marketing service while Cheetah has always worked across the whole online advertising spectrum making it a better solution for clients that need a certain level of service and sophistication.
Affordable display option - The SiteScout platform runs comparable to other self-serve display platforms, and offers a very large network from which to choose.
More visibility for our brand - We've used SiteScout as an awareness tactic, and received millions of impressions at a reasonable cost.
Our efficiency has decreased with CheetaMail actually. Too many service calls to find out why something isn't working as expected, account setup questions, issues with PiP, takes too long to get a simple form built, customer service response time, etc...
Reporting is not very streamlined. This has caused us to take our reporting offline and use a method with better visibility.
