Likelihood to Recommend If you have a multiple social channel strategy, the Brand Networks Platform does a good job of comparing and summarizing the cross-platform performance of all the social campaigns. They also have really good optimization technology, so if you have a beginner media buyer who doesn't have a lot of time to devote to (or knowledge about) optimizing campaigns, the BN tool would be helpful.
Read full review Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
Read full review Pros Sleek design -- very attractive UI Constantly innovating and updating the platform Their support desk is very good. Very responsive and can usually update my issue within 1-2 business days. Read full review Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products). Read full review Cons API data issues. There are somewhat frequent breakdowns in continuous data being pulled from the social platforms The campaign creation flow is a little clunky and has a couple bugs. Users often forgo using the platform to set up new campaigns, and use the native platforms instead Because it's in continual development, there are lots of little bugs that slip through the cracks Read full review If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that. There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
Read full review Usability I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"! The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!
Read full review Support Rating We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
Read full review Online Training Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Facebook for Business has far fewer bugs and errors. Brand Networks has made some major changes over the 3 years that I have been using the platform, but because they are constantly changing and overhauling their platform, there are naturally more bugs in the system -- and this can interfere with the user experience.
Read full review Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
Read full review Return on Investment If you can create the report you need through automation, you can have those automatically sent to your email or a client's email. That saves time. If optimization works correctly, you get even more efficient costs against you given campaign objective. However, when features are broken, or there is a bug and I can't pull the performance data I need immediately, it detracts from my productivity Read full review Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads. Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap. If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account. Read full review ScreenShots