Google Ads vs. The Trade Desk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Ads
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
The Trade Desk
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The Trade Desk is the eponymous flagship product from the company headquartered in Ventura California, a demand-side / data management hybrid platform (DSP / DMP).N/A
Pricing
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Considered Both Products
Google Ads
Chose Google Ads
We have observed that the Bing Ads performs better than the Google Ads when we target the older audience. The cost per conversion is also better than the Google Ads on Bing because of low competition possibly. However, Google Ads is preferred by us mostly because of the …
The Trade Desk
Chose The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk allows you to manage multiple display platforms from one interface. Google Ads only allows you to advertise on their platform and their network. This limits your ability to find new niche opportunities with Display Advertising. Although Google Ads claims to be on …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Small Businesses
Serpstat
Serpstat
Score 9.3 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream Advisor
WordStream Advisor
Score 7.0 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(115 ratings)
7.1
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(21 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.2
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(8 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AdsThe Trade Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
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.
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The Trade Desk
After extensive research of DSP and DMP platforms in the market, our agency made the wise decision to license TTD's platform and develop a long-term partnership. TTD continues to innovate and offer cutting-edge media buying solutions, access to more audience data segments, and access to new and emerging media channels like CTV/OTT and digital-out-of-home. We couldn't be happier with TTD's technology and is one of the most advanced agency users of TTD is a key differentiator for our agency.
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Pros
Google
  • 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).
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The Trade Desk
  • User engagement - Cookie matching provides better engagement and effectiveness
  • Reporting of campaigns - Great reporting on display advertising & platforms
  • Dashboard reporting - Scalable to global deployment & campaigns
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Cons
Google
  • If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
  • There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.
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The Trade Desk
  • Reporting platform leaves a lot to be desired. Requires a lot of trial/error to pull exactly what you need to drive optimizations/learnings.
  • The "stop"/"continue bidding" feature for sitelists, devices, player sizes, etc is awful. When you set something up specifically, you should not have the AUTOMATIC option to serve beyond those parameters.
  • Trafficking video (VAST/VPAID) tags requires a manual insertion of a click URL. Completely redundant ask and is not provided by advertisers as that URL lives within the ad tag. Should not require multiple actions traffic a video tag.
  • Creative approval process (manual) doesn't seem necessary and is not a part of peers' platforms. There is no "pause/deactivate" feature for creative, you remove them or adjust the end date.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
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.
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The Trade Desk
No answers on this topic
Usability
Google
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!
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The Trade Desk
It's very intuitive. We had some training materials, but found that users were able to navigate through the software without needing many resources. Our only suggestion would be to add hover-over capability in the browser, so users can see a pop-up message further explaining what each button does.
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Support Rating
Google
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
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The Trade Desk
We noted no issues with our limited interaction with support. The software operated just as expected and we found that we were able to navigate needs on our own. We understand that The Trade Desk offers excellent support, so we believe it will be a good resource to us in the future.
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Online Training
Google
Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
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The Trade Desk
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
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.
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The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk is a much better product than AppNexus. Even though both products showed promise awhile back, AppNexus stopped innovating and The Trade Desk became specialists on data, cross site tracking and CTV inventory thus having a better and more unique product that actually adds value to your advertising efforts.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • 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.
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The Trade Desk
  • The good thing about having an agency account is The Trade Desk lets you add your markups to the client billing.
  • We had a very positive response from clients regarding their perceived ROI on their ad spend through The Trade Desk.
  • We did not have many national clients, mostly local dealerships, so it was difficult for them to allocate a lot of funds to display advertising, even though the ROI yield was acceptable.
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ScreenShots