Google Campaign Manager 360 vs. Pepperjam Ascend (discontinued) vs. Post Affiliate Pro

I feel pretty neutral about Google Marketing Platform. For the longest time, my company wasn't using it because each of the features (Data Studio, Analytics, etc.) could be accessed separately. In fact, most of the time, I don't even go into Google Marketing Platform because it's easier to directly navigate to the individual platforms. There are very few features about GMP that can only be accessed from the GMP UI. The Integrations Center is probably the main feature I utilize from the GMP UI, which allows me to see a summary of the integrations I have in place across all my client properties and accounts.

Incentivized

For our business, affiliate marketing is by far the lowest ROI marketing channel. If you're looking to get products, brands, and offers listed on coupon sites, Pepperjam Ascend is a great tool. If you're looking to engage with influencers or drive sales without giving away margin, Pepperjam Ascend is likely not for you.

Incentivized

Post Affiliate Pro is suitable for any online business that's interested in more sales that come from affiliate partners (and are willing to pay them commission from sales).

Incentivized

• Bringing together data from multiple channels and engines and allows you to visualize the data in an easy to use platform. This saves time from using multiple logins for the different platforms.
• Auto bidding tools save time from manual bidding, as it allows you to set the specific terms around what levels you want to cap your CPCs at. You then let DoubleClick adjust your bids to gain the most conversions from the cheapest CPCs. This frees up time to do other in-depth analysis and strategy.
• DoubleClick also has the ability to track conversions and clicks on any page using their floodlight tags. This is good for tracking certain actions on yours or a client's site and is especially good if they do not use any other tools, such as Google Analytics or Adobe, to track conversions and user actions on site. You can also use these in conjunction with the auto bidding tools.

Incentivized

• Lots of coupon sites.
• Enables different tiers of commissions.
• Can blast out newsletters to your network.

Incentivized

• Tracking works brilliantly.
• Split commission feature is great.
• Multiple tracking methods, SEO friendly links are included.
• SaaS version - didn't have to install anything.

Incentivized

• The process for on-boarding new users can be difficult if they do not already have a Gmail or Gmail-linked account.
• Difficult to troubleshoot technical issues (with the platform, with tags, etc.) because of the lack of customer support. Unclear if the agency has a dedicated team or individual to assist, and often have to deal with out-sourced support teams.

Incentivized

• The dashboard/platform is the furthest thing from user-friendly. It looks like a high school student with zero experience designed it in excel and hoped for the best with the results.
• Reports are hit and miss. They may load, they may not! It's ridiculous, in my opinion.
• No mobile options whatsoever, everything has to be desktop. It's 2022, they need to catch up!

• Does not provide out of the box integration with Salesforce/HubSpot
• Requires knowledge of PHP in some use cases
• User interface and on-screen instructions are not always user friendly

Incentivized

Due to its adapting behavior with industry ad formats and seamless integration with publishers and DSP's, I don't see myself moving away from DCM. As we see the display advertising is getting more programatic and automated due to the rise of DSP and concept of RTB, Double Click has evolved with new advanced best practices

The Doubleclick interface is easy and simple to get a hang of. The options are slightly limited compared to other DSPs. But, for a simple campaign, this is a great DSP to move forward with. They have a ton of data and can plug into a lot of different partners

Incentivized

It takes some time to learn how to use it. I do believe it could be a little more usable, but the support helps every time. Even new partners learn to use it relatively fast, and as the time goes by, you can help them yourself and they do not need to reach reach out to customer service.

They do not have strong support team. It is tough to get answer when I need it. They always refer you to an online guide and not an actual person. If so, the person is based out of an offshore team in India and does not know the specific client goals .

Incentivized

Post Affiliate Pro has excellent support. It has improved over time and has a great customer support, if you have any problems. They respond quickly and so far have solved all of our problems. There could be more languages besides English, but it still works great. I can tell that the costumer service staff has a lot of experience.

I would highly recommend asking clients to provide 3PAS tags or use an internal 3PAS

Incentivized

Marin takes a lot more time for everything, mainly for the campaigns setup. This also leads to many mistakes, which impact the performance. I've used Marin on a couple of previous clients and we've had many problems with it, mainly with correct conversion tracking and account optimizations. Besides, Marin is behind all the new features available on AdWords, which makes the tracking also not very flexible.

Incentivized

Pepperjam Ascend's user interface is way behind these other platforms. It's not intuitive nor is it easy to create custom reports and engage with your publishers. We have been stuck with Pepperjam and many other affiliate networks have a very similar layout without much upside.

Incentivized

Basically both are great. Post Affiliate Pro has more integration features with CMS and Payment solutions (Joomla, Drupal etc.) but has the drawback of not integrating with Salesforce and required PHP knowledge in some cases. On the other hand, Referral Rock integrates well with Salesforce and required no coding knowledge as far as I know.

Incentivized

• DS3 has improved ROI considerably due to its ability to make the work of a team of digital marketers to go further and improving internal efficiency.
• There is a notable improvement in account performance for those integrated with DoubleClick as opposed to not, with better tracking, new bid strategy options, and a more responsive interface.
• The additional fee on top of media spend is a considerable expense for a large advertiser, but the necessity of a product/solution such as this means that there is always likely to be some comparative cost.

Incentivized

• I was hitting anywhere from $130 - $450 per month in commission payout before Pepperjam Ascend. Now with Pepperjam Ascend, I maybe get $40! I am still waiting on payouts from January.

• Started using it several month ago; I can see that I can profit
• Gained the trust of my customers, as they see it is rock-solid software
• It is very flexible; it can adapt to your business needs