Sizmek Ad Suite vs. Yahoo Native

I've use Sizmek as media analytics and reporting tool. Unless a site doesn't work properly with Google DoubleClick, I rarely recommend Sizmek over DoubleClick. It can do everything DoubleClick does, but with almost twice the hassle. One Area that makes it easier to track is that ads are given individual tracking ID's that creative can look up and search by when indexing and testing to make sure all ads are working and input.

Incentivized

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

• Easy Dashboard Navigation - Search bar allows user to quickly locate details about any campaign
• Insightful Analytics Tools - Platform provides users customizable graphs to leverage for reporting presentations
• Extensive Reporting Metrics - Ability to pull ad performance reports on all aspects of campaign
• Simple Creative Hosting - Easy upload and path location details for creative files

Incentivized

• 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

• Sizmek's trading desk was a total miss when I tested it a few years ago.
• I briefly used Abakus and did not find it intuitive, accurate or helpful. It has a long way to go before it can compete with the likes of VisualIQ.

Incentivized

• 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

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

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

For me the main point here is the support, all the adservers offer more or less the same functionality and capabilities. The real advantage you will gain using Sizmek will be their customer support team and their open approach with other vendors.

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

• Sizmek has had a positive impact on ROI because it delivers the reports our clients want and need
• Sizmek has had a postive impact on employee morale due to ease of use

Incentivized

• 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