Google Ad Manager vs. Simpli.fi

Google Ads Manager is great if you need major visibility on a large ad network rather than targeting one specific website, app or platform. Let's be real here if you have any business that is done online (sell products, generate leads, etc) you pretty much have to be on Google. I've tried other advertising solutions including competitor search engines, sponsored content solutions, social media advertising, and none really compare to the traffic you can get that is keyword-driven, meaning a user is actually demonstrating interest in whatever you sell or offer.

Incentivized

If you don't care where your campaigns are running, if you don't care about your clients then feel free to do business with them. I would not recommend them to other agencies or business if they have a lot of particular advertisers and clients that they work with. It is too much work for them. If you want to do a self-service model with Simpli.fi, then I could recommend working with them. As long as I don't have to deal with their customer service daily, and my company has the control of the campaigns, I can feel more comfortable working with them. But even still, there are a lot of red flags that have been raised over the last few years and I am skeptical.

Incentivized

• Interface. You can understand how to build the ads very easily. When you first begin, and throughout the process, there are little help icons which explain what you need to understand.
• Pricing. By this, I mean the ability to change it at any time. You can select a variable rate, or you can preset it. Either way, you can change how much you spend every second if you'd like. This makes it easier to control your budget if you need to make emergency purchases and don't have much space in your budget.
• Always growing. They are always announcing something new. Always growing and always trying to update.

Incentivized

• Simpli.fi's Geo-Fencing capabilities are top notch! The ability to include an unlimited number of geo-fences within a campaign is invaluable, as is the ability to measure the effectiveness of a geo-fencing campaign in driving foot traffic to our clients' physical locations.
• Our organization appreciates the knowledge, experience and responsiveness of Simpli.fi's customer support staff.
• One of the things Simpli.fi does particularly well is the education of its users and re-sellers. From monthly webinars, to its Bullseye learning courses, they have a way to make the complex understandable to even the most green digital sellers!

Incentivized

• Bumper Machine - While this is still in beta, there is a lot of room for improvement for the machine to pick proper clips. I'm sure that will come in time though.
• Inclusion of a Home Page Button - This is a simple request, truly, but one that bothers me everyday. I have a campaign home button, but it's not accessible unless you go back to the beginning of the platform. If the 'home' button was static, I'd be able to go to my preferred view with one click instead of having to loop around, as there isn't a trustworthy 'back button' option either.
• Display - This is a big one. I have a love/hate relationship with display campaigns and algorithms. I have seen where they can perform [strongly] but also be massive budget bleeds with little ROI. It's not very industry specific either so I'm hoping to gain more consistency and trust with the future of the display algorithm.

Incentivized

• The approaches are not easily understood by our sales reps.
• The reporting platform is pretty basic. The new platform is still in beta version.

Incentivized

I think it's useful for our team and we rely on it to improve our business. It is within our budget also. Although we still will need an approval from the upper-level management team, I don't see any problem with that

Incentivized

As I have said, if you want all the Google functionality and can use all of the features that Google offers on a dashboard, it's a great choice. But, I'm not a fan because I think the interface could be redesigned to be more user-friendly - make it color-coded with different options - it just feels now like you can get all, but make it easier for the end designer to use.

Incentivized

I could say a lot about this topic. As an agency, we get a new [representative] to talk to almost every quarter to go over select accounts and the campaigns within. Most of the time, these [educated representatives], don't provide any new feedback, or I just simply [disagree] with their approach. This is not all the time however. I have learned a lot from a rare few, [individuals] that have given me new strategies and access to betas early on. The other side of support, is the [overseas support platform]. [It] is usually not very helpful, but you can [emphasize] issues and they can research [them]. The Google Tag Implementation team is pristine though. When you need them, you need to set an appointment, which is usually 2 weeks out; they are so over-my-head intelligent, I've never had a bad experience with them and whenever I needed them for a fix, they solved it [within] the first call.

Incentivized

I personally liked it because of the complex features available. Knowing that this comes from Google, I did not have second thoughts - Comes from an Top tier brand. There were other products in the market, however, I chose to stick to this due to the following reasons, Customer support Self help articles

Incentivized

We have done a lot of research on many other vendors that offer the same or even more as Simpli.fi and have found a great fit for our business. There are many other options out there for programmatic buying! My advice to you is do your research. Don't just jump into bed with one without knowing all of the facts. Ask questions. Do some digging. And NEVER take anything they say at face value. They are there to sell you the product and if you move forward, you will for sure be disappointed

Incentivized

• It had a massively positive impact for us, allowing us to generate revenue from ad space on our website.
• Being able to custom quote ad space on our site, instead of relying on AdSense allowed us to increase our monthly ad revenue as well.
• Providing reliable data to advertisers regarding impressions and CTRs helped create repeat-customers.

Incentivized

• We have been able to leverage Simpli.fi's geo-fencing tools to pry business away from larger competitors.
• The lack of a customer-facing dashboard is a weakness.
• Simpli.fi's low barrier of entry has allowed us to scale at our pace without the threat of being cut off in the face of high minimum spends.

Incentivized