Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Good for instances where search campaigns are driving poor overall traffic. Campaigns for awareness work well, and you have pretty good control of how your ads look without having to do too much work. We've used this successfully for law, financial services, and political campaigns effectively. With Twitter banning political ads, and Facebook becoming increasingly strict on their approval guidelines, this may turn into the best alternative. Would not necessarily recommend for ecommerce campaigns, or lead based campaign where keeping cost per conversion down is a primary objective.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Offers extensive solutions to reach a high volume of users and create new reach outside of major networks like Google and Bing. Provides unique ways to differentiate advertisers in top positions on search results pages. Creates unique tactics to utilize on display networks (carousel and video takeovers). Read full review Cons 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. Read full review No traffic -- despite a high ROI, the lack of overall spend led to us eventually remove support for the channel from our services. Nothing to differentiate it from other paid platforms -- Gemini didn't particularly offer anything new or novel that made it worth using over Bing and Google. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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
Read full review Usability 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
Read full review One of my main pain points with yahoo gemini is that the product is very difficult to use and the UI seems like they took a skeleton of a similar product and made it bare bones functional for the purpose of generating ad spend. It is a huge barrier for new customers and I feel one of the main reasons they have new customers at all is all the free trial dollars they offer.
Read full review Support Rating 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 .
Read full review They were always super helpful during training and demoing and would answer any questions we had. We didn't have a direct account manager, which would have been nice, but I just don't think their size accommodates for that type of set up. They are very knowledgeable and help guide you through a set up for each particular client.
Read full review Implementation Rating I would highly recommend asking clients to provide 3PAS tags or use an internal 3PAS
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Yahoo Gemini! does stack up well against its competitors in the smaller spending realms. We've never been able to justify the ROI when we try to scale it up to even 10% - 15% of our spend. No, we've found that it's much better as a tangential win than a mainstream channel.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review It has created a more comprehensive understanding of the audience to whom a client is marketing. It allows clients to target and reach audience members on all major search platforms. It provides data and reporting to understand and analyze campaign success and optimize campaigns towards client goals. Read full review ScreenShots