Google Ads vs. The Trade Desk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Ads
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
$500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
The Trade Desk
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
The Trade Desk is the eponymous flagship product from the company headquartered in Ventura California, a demand-side / data management hybrid platform (DSP / DMP).N/A
Pricing
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Editions & Modules
Offer A
$500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
Offer B
$1500
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
Offer C
$3000
in Ads credit in the first 60 days
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Considered Both Products
Google Ads
Chose Google Ads
We have observed that the Bing Ads performs better than the Google Ads when we target the older audience. The cost per conversion is also better than the Google Ads on Bing because of low competition possibly. However, Google Ads is preferred by us mostly because of the …
The Trade Desk
Chose The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk allows you to manage multiple display platforms from one interface. Google Ads only allows you to advertise on their platform and their network. This limits your ability to find new niche opportunities with Display Advertising. Although Google Ads claims to be on …
Chose The Trade Desk
compared to these three, stack adapt is a bit easier to get going plus it's less expensive. I still love Google Ads and meta ADS for the ability to own the moment in terms of dashboard. Feels like you have more "control" with Google Ads and meta ADS, even if that isn't the case.
Features
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
6.8
11 Ratings
7% above category average
The Trade Desk
-
Ratings
Ad campaign creation7.611 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad deployment7.310 Ratings00 Ratings
Display advertising7.410 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation7.411 Ratings00 Ratings
Sequence targeting6.410 Ratings00 Ratings
Contextual advertising6.710 Ratings00 Ratings
Social advertising5.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
7.2
11 Ratings
6% above category average
The Trade Desk
-
Ratings
Ad dashboards7.111 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad performance reports7.911 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking7.411 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting7.311 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization6.511 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad Auctions
Comparison of Ad Auctions features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
7.9
10 Ratings
5% below category average
The Trade Desk
-
Ratings
Ad bidding7.910 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Small Businesses
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(126 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.6
(21 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.4
(17 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(8 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Google Ads is a useful advertising tool to build brand exposure and generate lead volumes for your chosen product. Whilst it can be costly at times due to competitor bidding strategies and requires constant monitoring to ensure campaigns perform as expected, it typically provides the desired quality and quantity of leads for custom budgets.
Read full review
The Trade Desk
After extensive research of DSP and DMP platforms in the market, our agency made the wise decision to license TTD's platform and develop a long-term partnership. TTD continues to innovate and offer cutting-edge media buying solutions, access to more audience data segments, and access to new and emerging media channels like CTV/OTT and digital-out-of-home. We couldn't be happier with TTD's technology and is one of the most advanced agency users of TTD is a key differentiator for our agency.
Read full review
Pros
Google
  • Automated targeting via Smart Shopping campaign. It's one of the best campaign types in Google Ads. In the beginning, you may see lower revenue and ROAS, but once you give some meaningful time to your campaign, it is most likely to perform well.
  • Smart bidding strategies: Google Ads has developed some really great bidding strategies such as maximizing conversion and maximizing conversion with ROAS settings. Based on one's requirement and their goal with revenue and target ROAS, they can choose the appropriate bidding strategy.
  • Reporting: A business owner and advertising must know about their audiences, how their campaigns have been performing, what's working and what's not, and for that reason, powerful, effective reporting is needed, and Google Ads provides rich details reporting that covers almost every aspect of a business.
Read full review
The Trade Desk
  • User engagement - Cookie matching provides better engagement and effectiveness
  • Reporting of campaigns - Great reporting on display advertising & platforms
  • Dashboard reporting - Scalable to global deployment & campaigns
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • 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
The Trade Desk
  • Reporting platform leaves a lot to be desired. Requires a lot of trial/error to pull exactly what you need to drive optimizations/learnings.
  • The "stop"/"continue bidding" feature for sitelists, devices, player sizes, etc is awful. When you set something up specifically, you should not have the AUTOMATIC option to serve beyond those parameters.
  • Trafficking video (VAST/VPAID) tags requires a manual insertion of a click URL. Completely redundant ask and is not provided by advertisers as that URL lives within the ad tag. Should not require multiple actions traffic a video tag.
  • Creative approval process (manual) doesn't seem necessary and is not a part of peers' platforms. There is no "pause/deactivate" feature for creative, you remove them or adjust the end date.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
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
The Trade Desk
No answers on this topic
Usability
Google
This is more of a subjective rating, because I think it can be increased with how much our ad spend is. The more of an ad spend, the more visibility we can get, and therefore all features can climb. With an overall larger presence the usability is that where we can get messages out quick, and that's the main thing we try to do with our campaigns.
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The Trade Desk
easy to understand dashboards and the self started ability to get going on your own terms. It's great to target niche groups across the world while still being able to report at a high level to C-suite. Wish it drove more conversions, but display can be a struggle there. Overall, would use it again.
Read full review
Support Rating
Google
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
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The Trade Desk
We noted no issues with our limited interaction with support. The software operated just as expected and we found that we were able to navigate needs on our own. We understand that The Trade Desk offers excellent support, so we believe it will be a good resource to us in the future.
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Online Training
Google
Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
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The Trade Desk
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
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
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk is a much better product than AppNexus. Even though both products showed promise awhile back, AppNexus stopped innovating and The Trade Desk became specialists on data, cross site tracking and CTV inventory thus having a better and more unique product that actually adds value to your advertising efforts.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • 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.
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The Trade Desk
  • The good thing about having an agency account is The Trade Desk lets you add your markups to the client billing.
  • We had a very positive response from clients regarding their perceived ROI on their ad spend through The Trade Desk.
  • We did not have many national clients, mostly local dealerships, so it was difficult for them to allocate a lot of funds to display advertising, even though the ROI yield was acceptable.
Read full review
ScreenShots