TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    OpenX

    Score1 out of 10
    N/AOpenX is an ad serving platform. It is sold option as a hosted solution for can be purchased as an installed application. It allows for easy inventory management , geo-targeting of ads by country, and provides statistics for each ad placement.N/A

    Smaato

    Score7 out of 10
    N/ASmaato is a supply-side publisher platform (SSP) from the Verve Group since the 2021 acquisition.N/A

    Yahoo Ads

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/AYahoo Ads supports mobile, native and search engine marketing and advertising, and is a solution for placing ads where visitors are. The marketplace offers search and native advertising in one advertising platform.

    $25

    per month

    Pricing
    OpenXSmaatoYahoo Ads
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Yahoo Gemini!
    $25.00
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    OpenXSmaatoYahoo Ads
    Free Trial
    NoYesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    OpenXSmaatoYahoo Ads
    Considered Multiple Products
    OpenX
    Chose OpenX
    We have used Basis as a DSP but found better results in integrating OpenX with our own bidder. As for Smaato, they are focused only on in-app traffic so they are a niche player. OpenX is a bigger player for agencies that have different campaigns with multiple objectives and …
    Incentivized
    Chose OpenX
    OpenX provides the same inventory you can get on any other SSPs but at lower price points (generally). However, other exchanges have put more resources on curating their inventory and customer support and in OpenX, you may find some nasty surprises in terms of ad quality and …
    Incentivized
    Verve Group
    Chose Smaato
    Smaato has better anti-fraud controls than most exchanges. Even if the inventory ends up being a bit pricey, I am more comfortable running campaigns on Smaato because I know there won't be any issues with the clients claiming refunds for invalid traffic. I believe that as the …
    Incentivized
    Yahoo!
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    86%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    83%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    71%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    OpenXSmaatoYahoo Ads
    Ad Network Integration
    Comparison of Ad Network Integration features of OpenX and Smaato and Yahoo Ads
    Feature
    OpenX
    6.6
    3 Ratings
    11% below category average
    Smaato
    -
    Ratings
    Yahoo Ads
    -
    Ratings
    Data Transfer6.53 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    DSP integration6.83 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad Campaigns
    Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of OpenX and Smaato and Yahoo Ads
    Feature
    OpenX
    7.0
    5 Ratings
    11% below category average
    Smaato
    -
    Ratings
    Yahoo Ads
    -
    Ratings
    Ad campaign creation6.85 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad deployment6.65 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Display advertising7.35 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad display and retargeting segmentation6.55 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Sequence targeting7.54 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of OpenX and Smaato and Yahoo Ads
    Feature
    OpenX
    6.6
    5 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Smaato
    -
    Ratings
    Yahoo Ads
    -
    Ratings
    Ad dashboards5.95 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad performance reports6.05 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad conversion tracking6.15 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad attribution reporting7.04 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Cross-channel ad management7.25 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad forecasting and optimization7.64 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    OpenXSmaatoYahoo Ads
    Small Businesses
    AdRoll
    Score3.7 out of 10
    AdRoll
    Score3.7 out of 10
    Amazon Advertising Sponsored Products
    Score5.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Criteo Commerce Growth
    Score8 out of 10
    Criteo Commerce Growth
    Score8 out of 10
    Amazon Advertising Sponsored Products
    Score5.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Criteo Commerce Growth
    Score8 out of 10
    Criteo Commerce Growth
    Score8 out of 10
    AdSense
    Score8.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    OpenXSmaatoYahoo Ads
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.3
    (15 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    5.0
    (17 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    5.4
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    6.5
    (6 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    OpenXSmaatoYahoo Ads
    Likelihood to Recommend
    OpenX
    What are the best ways to integrate it with salesforce.com? What are the best ways to target our users with this tool? To segment the users? How can I integrate my ads with your adexchange-what sizes are you looking for in terms of banners, skyscrapers and so on. In this way I can plan my in house ad and those for the exchange to be the same size, to avoid duplication of work.
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    Smaato is very well suited for user acquisition and retargeting companies. Their overlap in terms of audiences and publishers with other exchanges is very limited, which makes it a great alternative when you need to scale a campaign and want to maintain your frequency cap. They work very well in branding campaigns as well as performance campaigns.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Yahoo!
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    OpenX
    • OpenX is a system that was designed to scale as is evident in some key design decisions found throughout the platform. The multi-server setup that was chosen at Mail.com allowed for a distributed server architecture which separated the front end web delivery nodes from the backend MySQL Database master which replicated data back to each front end delivery node mysql slave. This eased the ability to horizontally scale as needed due to the ingenious separation of the ad impressions data tables on the delivery nodes which were being collected locally on each ad impression and then processed periodically back to to the master database which replicated the aggregated statistics back to the delivery nodes. The ability to load balance across the front end web delivery nodes, add caching at many different layers, utilize a CDN for the static ad images, implement PHP accelerators, and hit memcached instead of the MySQL master made the OpenX platform a service that was very resilient to failures.
    • The ability to optimize the platform is also something that OpenX does very well. This is evident in many of the config key parameters available. In addition to OpenX specific tunable's, optimizations can be made at many different levels in which the system sits. These include hardware and operating system level optimizations, tcp and networking stack optimizations, web server/php-cgi configurations, and database (MySQL InnoDB) tunable's. There are many different optimization knobs that can be tuned to help scale the application for the best performance possible
    • The documentation was simple, to the point, and well written which led to an easy initial implementation and roll out of a multi-server setup. The installation and upgrade procedures were straight forward even for the complexities of the multi-server setup. I also found the OpenX team to be accessible and even got a chance to meet some of the team at their Up Close and Personal events at Cal Tech in Pasadena. Core developers were on hand to answer technical questions and also made themselves available to us via email and irq channels.
    • The open nature of the OpenX platform allows for flexibility in the choice of web serving platform to use (Apache, nginx, Lighttpd) and also the database management systems (MySQL, PostGreSQL)
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    • Fill - the ad requests we send to Smaato have seen a great requests-to-impression ration.
    • Revenue - We've seen a lift in overall revenue thanks to the high CPM bids we get from Smaato.
    • Payments are always on time and they have a responsive financial team that is helpful in answering any questions.
    • Customer service - They are very fast to respond to any issues. The set up was streamlined thanks to their professional customer service.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Yahoo!
    • 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).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    OpenX
    • Propagation could be improved; ad units that need to go live immediately could take up to 45 minutes to propagate.
    • Over-complexity can be confusing. There are multiple tiers before assigning ad units per order and it seems unnecessary.
    • Real-time reporting or a status dashboard would be great.
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    • Inventory can be a bit pricey in competitive markets like the US.
    • Reporting dashboard is limited, needs work.
    • They don't offer a lof of transparency about margins over media cost.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Yahoo!
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    OpenX
    I no longer work at the company where I was using OpenX, but if I were then I'd certainly stay aboard. Frankly, there are a lot of sunk costs involved with building all of the infrastructure we had put in place, the system was working very well even if reporting was a hassle, and our team was trained on it. Also, I'm not aware of another product that does everything else we'd need it to.
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    No answers on this topic
    Yahoo!
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    OpenX
    I was given the system to use as part of setting up a whole new site from scratch in less than 2 months, with a large number of specialty hub pages to run ads on and lots of content I needed to run disease specific ads on. The system was easy for me to learn on the fly in a very compressed time frame. I would have loved more chance to really dig in under the hood to see all that it could do, but given how fast I had to work, I got everything up and running and looking great. And I did it ahead of my launch deadline too. My only reservation might be for people who are not as patient as I am in picking things up, or as hands on. Customer service was great if I needed them, and a quick start guide with the essentials would be ideal for those people.
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    Smaato has a UI where you can control your line items on the traffic you want to receive. That is a key unique selling point that other SSPs don't offer. Most of the items that you will need like reporting can be done on a self serve manner and that is a big plus, specifically for changes that need to happen really fast and you don't need to deal with account managers that may take some time to answer emails.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Yahoo!
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    OpenX
    They went above and beyond without ever asking for additional money and we met our launch date and immediately started to meet and even surpass our business goals. Nothing was too much trouble, which really stood out compared to other companies I had and was at that time also working with. Customer service can really make or break any business; if i expect my staff to give good customer service, I expect to get it too, and Open X gave it.
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    Smaato's account management team is very professional. They are quite fast in terms of customer support, which is very helpful. One item that stands out is that they are willing to understand what you need for each campaign and what is the best way to move forward. They don't just jump quickly into trying to upsell more of Smaato's products (audiences, data) like other SSPs do.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Yahoo!
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    OpenX
    OpenX is less focused than MoPub and it has a bigger reach as it is not limited to the mobile app. Unlike MoPub that focuses on performance, OpenX comes from the branding world and is pushing into CTV and other areas of the industry more catered to traditional media agencies and not pure ad tech players.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    With over 20 demand partners in our stack, Smaato is in the top 5
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Yahoo!
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    OpenX
    • OpenX made it easy to manage online advertising. At the time I used the product I was the lead developer in charge of implementing the solution but quickly was put into the role of managing the traffic and training other users. It was really easy for a technical user to become a traffic manager. Getting other users trained and up to speed was very efficient.
    Read full review
    Verve Group
    • Increased overall revenue
    • Strong demand pool
    • Easy reporting
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Yahoo!
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots