LinkedIn Marketing Solutions vs. Skai

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a recently (2015) expanded marketing platform for reaching audiences through the popular Linkedin work-oriented social network that includes modules like the Lead Accelerator (supporting segmentation features to improve conversion), Sponsored Updates, LinkedIn Onsite Display, LinkedIn Network Display, and Sponsored InMail. While still at its core a social marketing engine, Linkedin Marketing Solutions now presents a more comprehensive B2B advertising platform. The…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
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsSkai
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Kenshoo
$10,000
Starting Price
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsSkai
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsSkai
Ad Network Integration
Comparison of Ad Network Integration features of Product A and Product B
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
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
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
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
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
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
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsSkai
Small Businesses
WordStream Advisor
WordStream Advisor
Score 7.0 out of 10
Google Ad Manager
Google Ad Manager
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream Advisor
WordStream Advisor
Score 7.0 out of 10
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Sprinklr Marketing
Sprinklr Marketing
Score 7.2 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(46 ratings)
9.2
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(8 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
3.6
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(6 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
LinkedIn Marketing SolutionsSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
LinkedIn
Although it offered great features, we didn't really see a lot of traffic or results from the ads we placed. Working in hospitality, we had to strategically time and place our ads around holiday seasons and it can be difficult to predict a marketing campaign. Depending on your market, LinkedIn may not be the best avenue to advertise with.
Read full review
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
LinkedIn
  • Targeting - they have done a great job of allowing you speak to ideal audiences
  • Support - dedicated customer service and account advising is always accessible and very responsive
  • Curation of professional audiences - one of the biggest advantages to the platform is that its users are for the most part are professional
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
LinkedIn
  • The Campaign Manager is not good. It seems like the Campaign Manager (where you create and manage your self-serve ad campaigns) is buggy and doesn't have a good flow. Contrast with FB Ad Manager of the Google Adwords/Ads interface, which has a much more simple process to create and edits campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, audiences, budgets, etc. LinkedIn Campaign Manager seems to actively work against you trying to make changes to your campaigns.
  • LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers three options: sponsored content, InMail, and text ads. LinkedIn used to offer other ad services that you couldn't access unless you had a "managed ad account" run by LinkedIn Staff with a dedicated monthly ad spend. It seems most of those "hidden" features have disappeared, though you still have to contract with LinkedIn to offer dynamic ads. It would be better if LinkedIn empowered marketers to create the ads they want. (Perhaps with a dedicated acct. manager like how Google Ads works.)
  • This is silly, but it isn't easy to navigate to Campaign Manager. I have a bookmark for Campaign Manager because if you want to click there through LinkedIn, it takes 2 or 3 different screens to get to Campaign Manager. In my opinion, when you click the "Work" dropdown from the LinkedIn header (by your profile picture) you should have a link to Campaign Manager.
  • LinkedIn, in recent months, has made substantial changes to the Ads platform and Campaign Manager. Though these changes work to address some of the above issues, LinkedIn still has quite a ways to go before their platform is on par with their competition.
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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
LinkedIn
No answers on this topic
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
LinkedIn
in terms of promoted content reporting and usability, the platform is not as flexible or easy to use compared to more established social platforms like Facebook. However, it does offer plug-ins to Google Data Studio which makes pulling and manipulating data easier. My main usability gripe comes when looking at organic performance of a company page. There isn't an easy way to export organic performance data.
Read full review
Skai
Set-up like other marketing platforms. If you know Google Ads, you know Kenshoo
Read full review
Support Rating
LinkedIn
So, everything what I just said previously adds up to the value of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Definitely recommending it to a friend. It has its things to improve but its nothing major or nothing to worry about. So I give a 9 because it still has that, some user interface glitches that can be improved but do not damage the experience that you have with it.
Read full review
Skai
Very responsive and bring fast answers for problems
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
LinkedIn
If you want more precision in B2B targeting, then LinkedIn is without question the better alternative. However, as I established before, I've rarely seen LinkedIn campaigns be successful for anything other than brand awareness/thought leadership. And that's almost 100% what Twitter is for. Twitter campaigns almost always have a cheaper CPC AND CPM than LinkedIn and accomplish the same thing, so I would say go with Twitter. At times LinkedIn campaigns are just so you can tell someone at a higher level that you did precise targeting to the exact audience they wanted and check that box, because it's easier for them to understand how you'd do well on LinkedIn, and more difficult to tell that story on Twitter. But I honestly prefer Twitter and its platform for B2B awareness campaigns. Heretic, I know, but it's how I feel after several years of experience with both. Facebook is bottom of the barrel for B2B in my mind, so I'm not really going to discuss it. I would take LinkedIn over Facebook for many reasons, but Facebook is an option too, but more for SMB and just covering all bases, not as a primary choice for B2B marketing.
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
LinkedIn
  • We have seen a marked increase in inbound agent calls since we began LinkedIn marketing.
  • LinkedIn marketing is an excellent way to put your content in front of people that are actually going to read it, this has led to a major increase in our content being consumed and acted on.
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.
Read full review
ScreenShots