Marin Software vs. Skai

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Marin Software
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Marin Software is a cloud-based cross-channel advertising campaign management platform which integrates many tools and functions, and it is the name of the company in San Francisco that issues the software. Marin touts cross-display (including mobile-optimized) advertisement retargeting, social marketing management, and many other tools to manage complex marketing and paid-advertising (PPC) efforts. A free trial of this extensive platform is available. Marin Software maintains a client list…N/A
Skai
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Skai (formerly Kenshoo) is a cross-channel advertising solution for search marketing, social media and online advertising. The product aims to give advertisers and agencies the control and automation needed to make better investment decisions across search marketing and online advertising.
$10,000
Starting Price
Pricing
Marin SoftwareSkai
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Kenshoo
$10,000
Starting Price
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Marin SoftwareSkai
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Marin SoftwareSkai
Considered Both Products
Marin Software
Chose Marin Software
Kenshoo Search is definitely the most customizable auto bid tech for lease and sale, however Marin Software blows them out of the park when it comes to ease of use, customer support, and reports. If you have a fair number of cookie-cutter accounts with limited special issues, …
Chose Marin Software
I used Kenshoo about 3 years ago. I find Marin much simpler to use. The biggest plus for Marin is the bidding structure.
Chose Marin Software
Used Kenshoo previously. Much easier to use than Kenshoo. A lot more functions are available and day-to-day tasks can be performed quicker on Marin.
Chose Marin Software
The agency I was working at primarily used Kenshoo, DoubleClick and Marin but would sometimes also work direct to engine. Having played multiple roles as an account manager and also the technical lead on the product/vendor team, Marin definitely stood out as my favorite.
Chose Marin Software
Marin is a key player in the market for paid search, display and social. Its key competitors are Kenshoo and DoubleClick. I think that each provides specific value to their clients, but Marin offers a holistic value.
Chose Marin Software
Marin has a much better, polished reporting output that is Client ready. The entire interface is also more user friendly and easier to look at, navigate and understand. The scheduled alerts and reporting make management a breeze in comparison. Marin however loses to Kenshoo …
Chose Marin Software
Marin is very comparable to Kenshoo, and (for us anyway) quite a bit less expensive. Sure, Kenshoo has some additional features not offered by Marin that would be cool to have, but those features come at a hefty premium. Marin does everything we need it to do, at an acceptable …
Chose Marin Software
I evaluated Kenshoo, Acquisio, and Efficient Frontier at the same time as Marin Software. While all platforms had unique capabilities and areas where their functionality purportedly outperformed the others - Marin seemed to achieve the right balance for all of our needs (i.e. …
Chose Marin Software
Marin wasn't as flashy as some of the other tools we evaluated; however, it provided the fundamental tools we needed to do our job effectively & efficiently. Their reporting functionality works, but isn't as "bells & whistley" as the others; however, we've seen errors when …
Chose Marin Software
Marin and Kenshoo perform at nearly the same level. There are features in Marin that exceed that of Kenshoo (and vice versa). One great customer service feature of Marin is the ability to create full read-only access which enables clients to see reports just as we see them, …
Chose Marin Software
I really like Marin, I have used it the most of any bid management tool, and it is by far my favorite. Marin has an easy to learn interface and a nice training program that helps get everyone up to speed when they are new to using the program. It is an awesome tool.
Chose Marin Software
DoubleClick has gotten better, but Marin is easier to use and the service is better. This includes the help section and our Marin reps.
Skai
Chose Skai
Kenshoo Search offers keyword bid policies based off of sophisticated algorithms rather than simple bid rules. Also, the Kenshoo Desktop Editor allows for extremely easy bulk optimizations. Marin Software doesn't have bid algorithms or an easy-to-use desktop tool. These are …
Chose Skai
I definitely prefer Marin for paid search only accounts. I select Kenshoo when my client also purchases Google shopping media, since their proprietary tools there are best in class.
Chose Skai
I personally like Kenshoo better than Marin for a few reasons. When it comes to Ecomm Search, Kenshoo is far better in terms of available features, algorithmic bidding which is more focused on ROAS, and reporting especially for eCommerce. Marin is a good platform, especially …
Chose Skai
We selected Kenshoo in 2017 due to its market presence and its notoriety. We learned about Kenshoo's integrations with internal data warehouses, and the bid management aspects were touted as first class. In practice, our unique marketing needs did not align with the limitations …
Chose Skai
Kenshoo's integration with sales and social platforms as well as search made it the only choice when it came to managing campaigns. Other interfaces may be simpler and quicker but Kenshoo's range of external integrations makes it more flexible for certain campaigns and the …
Chose Skai
Some features of Kenshoo outshine other solutions we've evaluated. Kenshoo Infinity Suite is a great product for multi-channel management but overall is less favorable especially from a pricing perspective. We've transitioned several client accounts from Kenshoo to DoubleClick …
Chose Skai
Kenshoo is the best in class. With "time" being the most precious resource we have, Kenshoo allows us to get more done in the same amount of time as comparable products.
Chose Skai
Kenshoo is a more effective and user friendly platform than most competitors. Their tool is more expensive and like I said before, tailored to larger marketing budgets. They set them self apart with the ease of use, the Kenshoo editor, and cross channel functionality. However, …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Marin SoftwareSkai
Ad Network Integration
Comparison of Ad Network Integration features of Product A and Product B
Marin Software
-
Ratings
Skai
7.1
10 Ratings
4% below category average
Data Transfer00 Ratings8.510 Ratings
DSP integration00 Ratings5.75 Ratings
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
Marin Software
-
Ratings
Skai
6.1
11 Ratings
25% below category average
Ad campaign creation00 Ratings7.611 Ratings
Ad deployment00 Ratings7.611 Ratings
Display advertising00 Ratings4.310 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation00 Ratings4.810 Ratings
Sequence targeting00 Ratings6.39 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Marin Software
-
Ratings
Skai
7.3
12 Ratings
6% below category average
Ad dashboards00 Ratings7.612 Ratings
Ad performance reports00 Ratings9.812 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking00 Ratings6.712 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting00 Ratings7.611 Ratings
Cross-channel ad management00 Ratings5.810 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization00 Ratings6.211 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Marin SoftwareSkai
Small Businesses
Mautic
Mautic
Score 9.0 out of 10
Google Ad Manager
Google Ad Manager
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 8.0 out of 10
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Iterable
Iterable
Score 8.6 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Marin SoftwareSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(32 ratings)
9.2
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.6
(23 ratings)
7.8
(3 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(6 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
3.6
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(6 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.8
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Marin SoftwareSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
Marin Software
It's well suited when you have to integrate it with another data source, like an FTP for example. The dimensions you can assign to campaigns or ad group levels help for easier performance management and reporting. What makes it difficult is that everytime you need to update anything on the account, you can't use the publisher but have to do it through Marin. This makes the whole process very time consuming and causes more mistakes. Also if you have paused anything on the publisher and you don't remember to sync marin after, all changes on the publisher will get lost if you make new changes on marin
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Skai
Kenshoo would be a good tool if your client has extremely high budgets with low CPCs. For small, geo-specific accounts the capabilities have not be built out. Therefore, the tool could not budget pace our 250+ accounts. The main reason we had chosen Kenshoo was because of its budget pacing capabilities. Unfortunately, it did not save us time and created additional budget pacing issues with over pacing our accounts.
Read full review
Pros
Marin Software
  • Marin is a self-serve platform. You can tailor your campaigns per your preference/convenience/needs. You can customize your view, see % changes, create custom columns depending on your Key Performance Indicators, and set any sort of dimensions and labels that will help you filter for your campaigns on a daily basis.
  • Bidding and changes to destination URLs can be done through mass edits within the UI, without having to upload bulk-sheets. You push any changes from Marin to the Engines, and can also pull in your changes from Bing/AdWords engines by syncing your campaigns as well. The system will not publish anything you do not manually post until Midnight PST. You can copy paste straight from your excel bulksheet into the uploading tool (or upload the document through unicode text).
  • The Administrative log keeps track of all changes, and keeps users (through their logins) accountable for any edits. This way, you can filter for your name, and find the edits that you made, just to double check your work, or to make sure you are publishing the correct changes. There is a keyword- group- and campaign-level history/settings log, where you can see the name of the user who created, edited, published, paused, activated, deleted, etc. any item.
  • You can set up alerts that will help you manage accounts: anything from active campaigns with 0 ad copy, to finding keywords in low ad positions.
  • If you push duplicate keywords, the system will reject them, keeping our accounts from getting clouded due to human error. There is no need to download existing keywords or groups and use their keyword or group IDs to make any edits--instead, editing is a breeze because the system detects the new changes automatically. The only need for IDs is when making edits to creative.
Read full review
Skai
  • Kenshoo Search bid policies make bid optimization easy and automated. Optimizations are based off of sophisticated algorithms rather than simple bid rules (although Kenshoo Search also offers these). There are many different policies to choose from. Simply choose your type of goal (example: awareness vs. ROI), choose your metric, and assign to your campaign(s) and/or account.
  • Kenshoo Search reporting offers a large selection of reporting templates that are easily exported to Microsoft Excel. In addition, they also offer dashboard reporting with a variety of different widgets that are easily customizable. This feature makes it extremely easy to view metrics that may normally require manual excel work.
  • Kenshoo Search has a Desktop Editor tool similar to Google Adwords Editor that makes bulk optimizations easy and time efficient. This is a huge resource win for me and my team!
Read full review
Cons
Marin Software
  • Support. They are addressing this currently, and things seem to have improved lately, but we were experiencing long delays in getting support tickets addressed.
  • New Google Shopping campaigns will not even show in the tool. Old PLA campaigns are fine however.
  • Random missing data. Typically this happens after an update, but we've seen data missing in various clients. Usually logging a support ticket and having Marin Support rerun a backend process resolves the issue.
Read full review
Skai
  • When working with large accounts, such as mine, the tool can be slow. There are a lot of times where the editor tool will freeze, and I'm not sure if I need to reboot or exit the tool. I wish it was a smooth process, much like the AdWords editor tool.
  • Kenshoo support can be slow to respond at times. In the ticketing industry, things are very much based on time of day or time of the week. If the product is down or not functioning during an on-sale or a major event, it can be difficult to get tech support on the phone.
  • Their reporting really doesn't set them a part from the competition. I've used social tools such as Marin and a few others, and they're all pretty similar as far as reporting. If possible, I think you're better off using Google Analytics for reporting, just so you have a common denominator.
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Likelihood to Renew
Marin Software
I've used Marin Software now at three separate companies where I evaluated the platform along with several other internal partners. In each case, we did make the decision to renew based on our positive experience with the app and the customer support we received at the Enterprise level. Especially when we had complex integration questions or faced the change to Google's enhanced campaigns - Marin worked closely with us to make the transition seamless.
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Skai
We received great customer service from the Kenshoo Social team, they listen to feedback, and truly work to get things fixed. The tool works well and they are always working on ways to improve it to help improve performance for our clients
Read full review
Usability
Marin Software
Marin Software's usability is bar none in the paid search world. All that said, I think Marin Software only appears superior because all the tools in the space provide extremely subpar support. Kenshoo is so complex that I don’t know think half the people that work there know how to use it.
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Skai
Set-up like other marketing platforms. If you know Google Ads, you know Kenshoo
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Support Rating
Marin Software
The times that I have had to contact Marin support, they have been very helpful. When I spoke with them on the phone, they walked me through the process to be able to resolve the issue that I had, The gentleman walked me through all the steps and easily helped me resolve the issue that I had.
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Skai
Very responsive and bring fast answers for problems
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Online Training
Marin Software
Interactive helpful videos, summaries, and quizzes help a user learn the platform in demo-mode. The only challenge was that once you clicked certain buttons per instructions, you couldn't necessarily go back to retake notes without redoing the entire module.
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Skai
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Marin Software
As I said previously I would just highly recommend everyone being hands on during implementation to make sure everyone knows how to use the product. Marin Software does an excellent job with training and answering questions so this is not a significant insight however it makes the process easier in the long run
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Skai
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Marin Software
Marin is a must have for any enterprise-level PPC account. The time savings from task automation and the very sophisticated bidding platform can help any advertiser or agency effectively scale any account. In both AdWords and Bing, the bulk editing and automated bidding features are less reliable and prone to error. The interfaces are also unnecessarily complicated and outdated. While Google Analytics is a great tool, there are no features that tie true revenue data into these interfaces, limiting the amount you can really optimize around ROI.
Read full review
Skai
I think Skai beats the competitors with its advanced bidding management system, this is a unique feature of them that if you implement properly, your accounts will surely benefit from this, especially if you have tons of data that the algo can learn from and optimize accordingly. In terms of reporting, they are the best we've got so far, scheduling options are great.
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Return on Investment
Marin Software
  • It has definitely increased employee efficiency because we run on Yahoo Gemini, Bing, and Google. If we had to optimize/report per engine, it would take hours and hours each week.
  • I think it's made optimizations less of a daunting task in my daily routine. I've been able to pinpoint where our ROI suffers and work from there in a matter of minutes.
  • The customer service has gotten better and could still be improved. Our Marin rep used to be horrible at returning messages but once he got support, we were able to implement a ton more pixels and betas.
Read full review
Skai
  • ROI is harder to track due to reporting/column & time frame default tech in my humble opinion but generally better results when compared to other products
  • Since the interface is difficult to navigate and paid search is a reactive medium, can produce barriers to change.
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ScreenShots