Kevel vs. The Trade Desk

For ad serving, implementing client-side header bidding with prebid was actually easier with Kevel than it is with Google Ad Manager in most cases, particularly for display advertising. I found though that with more complex integrations (like video), there were more solutions and code snippets available with other larger ad servers (Google).

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• More personable team that can address customizations needed to the product.
• Easy to use interface.
• Frequent product updates with notifications via email.
• Well documented API.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• User interface could be faster to load.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

It's very intuitive. We had some training materials, but found that users were able to navigate through the software without needing many resources. Our only suggestion would be to add hover-over capability in the browser, so users can see a pop-up message further explaining what each button does.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Kevel was an easier initial implementation for header bidding with prebid. The team worked alongside us to make sure everything was operating as intended. We ultimately switched to Ads Manager to access AdX demand and other features that were not possible with Kevel (for instance, EBDA). There are benefits to both but I appreciated the attention we got from Kevel support when we were first working through the implementation. We are still using Kevel for many things, just not as our primary display advertising ad server.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Kevel enabled us to get up and running with client side header bidding when our team was still small and the technology was still new. This improved our ability to monetize our inventory.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized