Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) is Microsoft's search engine marketing and advertising campaign management alternative to the popular Adwords, that, similar to its competitor, provides analytics and a management dashboard for running a pay per click (PPC) paid listing campaign. Microsoft Advertising features the ability to delimit advertising to particular responsive demographics and to intermittent times and days of the week. It also supports offline updates that sync later.
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Smart AdServer
Score 10.0 out of 10
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Smart AdServer is a French ad server provider with a large international presence. Customers tend to be European media outlets. Smart AdServer It has been a subsidiary of the Axel Springer Group since 2007.
Despite using our account for advertising with every other social media company, Microsoft flagged ours as fraudulent. After dealing with them for weeks, we finally got to a manager, who said that they didn’t know anything, couldn’t provide any information, and was unable to do anything about it. It seems odd, but it would flagger account every time we try to upload the campaigns from Google directly into their ad manager. I would suggest if you try and use their platform, don’t tell them you’re using Google cause they seem to have a thing against it. Once your account is flagged, they have no reasonable way of resolving it, nor they are able to offer any support. You’re better off to just try a different way. Ultimately, just don’t use Microsoft advertising if you can possibly avoid it. Hopefully soon DuckDuckGo will have their own advertising platform and we can eliminate Microsoft given the terrible time we have working with this one of many, social media platforms.
Smart AdServer is great for a marketing department, to track stats and clicks of their audience. It's a great way to engage the client without actually engaging them. We use it all the time to monitor where they're going, what they're interested in, and how engaging our posts are. I would say it's probably not a good idea for a smaller organization, as one social media manager could work it all out
It is easy to use, with functionality covering mobile, desktop and even tablet. I'm always on the go, so it's nice to be able to access my server from pretty much anywhere.
It has a wonderful intuitive user interface, every facet of this is designed and thought over, so it's easy to navigate around the program.
It offers a free trial so there's no real commitment if you just want to try it out, which is nice.
Bing's ad platform could definitely use some improvements - it hasn't been updated in a long time, and it feels very outdated.
We feel that the optimization algorithms don't always perform as well for Bing Ads as they do in Google Ads (optimize for conversions, etc.).
It would be great to have even more integrations with LinkedIn audience targeting offered - right now, you can just make some bid optimizations in a couple of areas; we'd really like to get more robust options there, and maybe even things like cross-platform tracking.
I would like a more in-depth look at my traffic stats. I can see clicks, where my audience is going, but I'd like maybe some kind of perspective into who my audience is (18-24, adult, etc).
Constant updates. It's nice that they're always looking to update program, but the update can kinda get in the way of my work sometimes.
I'd prefer it if were a little cheaper – the free trial is nice, but getting my superiors to sign off on the cost (they're a bit old school) is a bit tough sometimes.
Our Bing Ads reps are very good and attentive. They've offered good recommendations and are quick to resolve unexpected issues and problems. Occasionally they have roped in technical support folks that have been friendly and helpful too. The general helpline for Bing Ads is also very good, especially when compared to Google's customer support.
Obviously Google is a huge competitor. Typically Google is top of the game for many advertising solutions including search. Microsoft ads has a lower scale and reach compared to Google. However, Microsoft ads audience does not overlap much with Googles, providing incremental reach. Although Microsoft ads lags a bit behind in adapting the new updates that Google comes out with, their customer service is very good and they are likely to go out of their way to adapt their platform to your needs whereas their competitor does not
Honestly, you can use either/or. I'm all about AdServer right now because since Adobe has implemented their cloud service, they've gotten more expensive. Smart AdServer is just one cost, and it's cheaper than Adobe Cloud
We've had a very hard time spending our budgets on Bing which has caused us a lot of extra work on our end. We've essentially had to move that money back to Google or other platforms.
It does have an easy import from Google so you're not doubling efforts.
The CPCs tend to be less expensive than Google - which is always good for business owners.
It's helped my organization better manage our traffic flow.
It's reduced the amount of work on our social media manager.
It's helped my organization get a better perspective on our clientele - where they're going, what they're interested in, it's been a great asset to our business.
