Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
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Simpli.fi
Score 6.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Simpli.fi is the epoymous flagship product from the company headquartered in Fort Worth, for programmatic media buying, display advertising, and streaming / OTT monetization. It is a data management and demand-side buying hybrid platform (DMP / DSP).
Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
If you don't care where your campaigns are running, if you don't care about your clients then feel free to do business with them. I would not recommend them to other agencies or business if they have a lot of particular advertisers and clients that they work with. It is too much work for them. If you want to do a self-service model with Simpli.fi, then I could recommend working with them. As long as I don't have to deal with their customer service daily, and my company has the control of the campaigns, I can feel more comfortable working with them. But even still, there are a lot of red flags that have been raised over the last few years and I am skeptical.
Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
Simpli.fi's Geo-Fencing capabilities are top notch! The ability to include an unlimited number of geo-fences within a campaign is invaluable, as is the ability to measure the effectiveness of a geo-fencing campaign in driving foot traffic to our clients' physical locations.
Our organization appreciates the knowledge, experience and responsiveness of Simpli.fi's customer support staff.
One of the things Simpli.fi does particularly well is the education of its users and re-sellers. From monthly webinars, to its Bullseye learning courses, they have a way to make the complex understandable to even the most green digital sellers!
I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"! The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!
We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
We have done a lot of research on many other vendors that offer the same or even more as Simpli.fi and have found a great fit for our business. There are many other options out there for programmatic buying! My advice to you is do your research. Don't just jump into bed with one without knowing all of the facts. Ask questions. Do some digging. And NEVER take anything they say at face value. They are there to sell you the product and if you move forward, you will for sure be disappointed
Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.
