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AppNexus

AppNexus

Overview

What is AppNexus?

AppNexus AppNexus offers online auction infrastructure and technology for data management, optimization, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated advertising campaigns. It integrates with advertising sources including Google's DoubleClick, Microsoft's AdECN, and aggregators.[3]

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Users have found great success in monetizing their inventory through the AppNexus platform, finding it to be an effective and reliable …
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AppNexus (APN) Review

8 out of 10
March 03, 2020
Incentivized
AppNexus is used as one of the primary DSP platforms that our programmatic team uses. Our team has been able to integrate AppNexus (APN) …
Continue reading

AppNexus Review

7 out of 10
October 07, 2019
Incentivized
We use AppNexus as a DSP for programmatic advertising. It's used as part of a stack of tools and other DSPs as part of our display …
Continue reading

A clean ecosystem

7 out of 10
September 05, 2019
Incentivized
We are using AppNexus to run campaigns in various countries, but mostly in the US. It allows us to get access to premium publishers at …
Continue reading

Great SSP!

8 out of 10
August 09, 2019
Incentivized
AppNexus is a good partner for us to scale in the programmatic space. It is used mainly by the account management team to run campaigns. …
Continue reading

Thumbs up to AppNexus!

7 out of 10
November 19, 2014
AppNexus is used in two departments in our company: Media Solutions and RTB.

For Media Solutions: We implement display and facebook …
Continue reading

RTB on AppNexus

7 out of 10
March 07, 2014
We use AppNexus as our RTB (real time bidding) platform for all display and some mobile products sold by our sales department. It is used …
Continue reading
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Popular Features

View all 13 features
  • DSP integration (8)
    9.0
    90%
  • Ad dashboards (9)
    9.0
    90%
  • Ad campaign creation (8)
    8.0
    80%
  • Ad performance reports (9)
    7.0
    70%
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Pricing

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What is AppNexus?

AppNexus AppNexus offers online auction infrastructure and technology for data management, optimization, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated advertising campaigns. It integrates with advertising sources including Google's DoubleClick, Microsoft's AdECN, and aggregators.[3]

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

End to End Demo of Windsor AppNexus Ad Data Connector

YouTube

AppNexus Apps 2.0

YouTube
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Features

Ad Network Integration

Integration with main ad networks, and exchanges to make accurate media buys.

8.5
Avg 7.4

Ad Campaigns

Features related to creating and deploying ad campaigns.

8
Avg 7.8

Ad Reporting & Analytics

Features related to reporting on and analyzing advertisements.

8.2
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is AppNexus?

AppNexus Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

AppNexus AppNexus offers online auction infrastructure and technology for data management, optimization, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated advertising campaigns. It integrates with advertising sources including Google's DoubleClick, Microsoft's AdECN, and aggregators.[3]

Adobe Advertising Cloud, Google Marketing Platform, and OpenX are common alternatives for AppNexus.

Reviewers rate DSP integration and Ad deployment and Ad dashboards highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of AppNexus are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(36)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Users have found great success in monetizing their inventory through the AppNexus platform, finding it to be an effective and reliable solution. They have also praised the platform for its impressive range of formats, including CTV inventory, which has proven valuable for customers running brand campaigns. With AppNexus, users can easily report on yield using the Yieldex feature, providing detailed metrics by section or DMA and enabling them to send KPI reports to management for better decision-making. In fact, many users have reported that the forecasting accuracy of Yieldex surpasses that of DFP, making it a valuable addition to their order management platforms. Moreover, AppNexus is highly regarded as a top performer in the header bidder stack, providing accurate and timely reporting.

AppNexus serves as a versatile DSP platform for programmatic advertising, offering highly customizable options and advantageous solutions for buying impressions. Users appreciate the ability to access premium publishers and reach users on multiple devices such as phones, PCs, and TVs. The global reach of AppNexus coupled with its exclusive publishers and supportive team make it a preferred choice for many advertisers. Additionally, AppNexus excels at data aggregation for organizing and managing journal subsets effectively. The platform is also utilized as a DMP for programmatic enterprise systems, providing accurate daily spend reports. Overall, AppNexus proves to be an invaluable tool for optimizing content inventory online and implementing successful programmatic campaigns.

Strong and Proactive Support Personnel: Multiple reviewers have praised the support team of AppNexus for their prompt resolution of issues and proactive approach to solving problems, ensuring a positive user experience.

Valuable Resource - AppNexus Wiki: Users have found the AppNexus wiki to be an invaluable source of information on various topics, including campaign performance and inventory optimization. The wiki provides comprehensive insights that help users make informed decisions.

Effective Platform for Buyers and Sellers: Many reviewers appreciate how AppNexus caters to the needs and goals of both buyers and sellers in the digital marketing industry. Its platform effectively facilitates transactions, creating mutually beneficial opportunities for all parties involved.

Cons:

  1. Time-consuming user creation process and invalid token messages: Some users have mentioned that creating users for a publisher account on AppNexus is a time-consuming process and can result in receiving invalid token messages. This aspect of the platform needs improvement.
  2. Complex platform with insufficient support: Several reviewers have found AppNexus to be a complex platform that requires a deep understanding of how it works. They also mentioned that the available wiki is insufficient, and getting support through email exchanges has been difficult. These users suggest that phone support would be more helpful.
  3. Non-intuitive interface and lack of training options: Users have expressed dissatisfaction with the platform's interface, stating that it is not easy to use, especially for newcomers. Additionally, they have mentioned the lack of training or certification options for users, making it challenging for them to fully utilize the platform's features effectively.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-16 of 16)
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May 27, 2021

Great CTV Solution

Kimberly Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Appnexus is a fantastic DSP as it has a broad range of formats to choose from. Most DSPs are limited to mobile or desktop targeting but Appnexus has CTV inventory which is very useful for our customers. We have been using it for a few years and we have found great results for brand campaigns. It is used mainly by the Marketing department.
  • Lots of CTV inventory
  • Premium publishers
  • Exclusive supply deals
  • High CPMs
  • Not enough traffic in Tier 3 countries
  • Needs more anti fraud controls
Appnexus is specifically well suited for CTV campaigns. They have the full technology stack to help you scale campaigns in any format, whether you need a lot of volume in traditional formats like banners and interstitials or if you need high-impact formats like video and other alternatives. Appnexus has a very strong set of unique publishers which makes it a great DSP for branding campaigns.
March 03, 2020

AppNexus (APN) Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AppNexus is used as one of the primary DSP platforms that our programmatic team uses. Our team has been able to integrate AppNexus (APN) with internal programs that help with efficiencies and better flowing process. We use AppNexus (APN) pixels to be placed within the client's sites to build audience segments, retargeting pools, and track performance.
  • Integration within internal platforms
  • Pixel implementation/creation
  • Custom audience segments
  • The platform itself seems dated
  • AppNexus (APN) doesn't work for a 30-min window during the day
  • Unable to preview creative/placements for test links
AppNexus is well suited to use for programmatic campaigns that we have to launch for clients. Everything from standard display, native, high-impact, and video can run within the platform. Our trading team is well experienced within AppNexus (APN), and it's typically the first DSP they learn when starting.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used AppNexus for its large list of features in managing our content inventory online. We chose AppNexus for its advertised automated process that claims to provide better optimization than doing so manually, it was used across our marketing department.
  • Many options in terms of aspects of detail in campaign management.
  • Automated systems that also work in tangent manually to allow manual optimizing and reporting.
  • Systems felt flexible and gave more control to activities.
  • The platform is incredibly complex and requires a great deal of understanding of how the platform works that caught us by surprise.
  • The wiki is not enough and when we resorted to reaching out to AppNexus it was a nuisance of having several emails going back and forth.
  • No phone support is offered which would have made several things easier than exchanging confusing emails.
  • Video inventory is still not implemented.
AppnNexus is a strong tool that is quite customizable but this program is hard to recommend to most organizations. It requires quite a bit of previous knowledge to fully utilize and even though the wiki has a complete set of instructions to follow, AppNexus has functions that conflict with each other at times. I would recommend this only to an organization that has a vast technical knowledge and doesn't mind its clunky UI.
Rob Schwertley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We added AppNexus to our header bidder stack over 2 years ago. Since then, they've been a consistent top performer. Their reporting is accurate and timely and they have been a true partner to work with.
  • Account management.
  • Header bidding.
  • Reporting.
  • Higher fill.
  • Higher CPM.
If you are a publisher monetizing your inventory, AppNexus is definitely a partner to talk to.
October 07, 2019

AppNexus Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use AppNexus as a DSP for programmatic advertising. It's used as part of a stack of tools and other DSPs as part of our display advertising strategies for our clients. It's highly customizable and helps create an advantage for us as we buy impressions for our clients.
  • Highly customizable.
  • Quality audience.
  • Audio ads available too.
  • Could be better from a view-ability perspective.
  • Interface can be clunky.
  • Support could be better.
AppNexus is perfect as a DSP. It is great for programmatic advertising and buying. As a buyer, it is easy to use and the support from the customer services team has been mostly great. Header bidding is a great tool too which has helped combat any viewability issues we encounter.
September 05, 2019

A clean ecosystem

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using AppNexus to run campaigns in various countries, but mostly in the US. It allows us to get access to premium publishers at high rates, but we use it to increase our reach among certain users that are found too hard on other platforms. We are able to reach users on their phones, their PCs, and even on their TVs, as AppNexus has a lot of CTV inventory.
  • A lot of connected TV inventory.
  • Premium publishers.
  • A very clean ecosystem, and we've never had an issue with fraud on the platform.
  • They charge a 1 USD fee for auditing creatives, which is unacceptable.
  • High CPMs.
  • The platform is not very easy to use.
AppNexus works very well for branding campaigns, where you are able to bid higher because performance is not that important. Since CPMs on the platform are high and publishers are premium, AppNexus is a perfect fit. I wouldn't recommend it if you need to achieve any kind of leads or CPA, or if you want to get easy clicks.
August 09, 2019

Great SSP!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AppNexus is a good partner for us to scale in the programmatic space. It is used mainly by the account management team to run campaigns. It has a great reach worldwide and some exclusive publishers that provide a competitive advantage against other platforms. They have a very good support team but the prices of their inventory are a bit higher than the open market.
  • Exclusive reach on selected premium publishers.
  • Extensive vetting of creatives to protect the integrity of their ecosystem.
  • World class support team.
  • They charge to audit creatives, which is unacceptable.
  • The platform is not easy to use. Not intuitive.
  • Steep prices on their inventory.
AppNexus is suitable for branding campaigns where you are able to bid aggressively. For performance campaigns its usually harder to meet your ROI target because of the expensive prices. Also, AppNexus works better on the US market as their main focus is on that geo compared to other SSPs with a broader reach internationally.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our digital ad operations department is using Yieldex of AppNexus for reporting on yield. Before Yieldex, we were not able to report on metrics by section or DMA. Now I send KPI reports to management with metrics like STR, Impressions, eCPM, capacity -- by website, section and by DMA. Our traffic team is using the At-Risk report to check on campaigns that may not be delivered in full. Yieldex's forecasting accuracy has been proven to be better than DFP. So, we are also going to plug it into FatTail -- our order management platform for DFP. Yiedex allows me to build reports which no previous apps were able to do with ease. Since it logs all the impressions, Yieldex allows me to slice and dice the data. It lets you report based on DIV_ID. You can also analyze sales performance via salesperson scorecard or advertiser scorecard.
  • Yieldex's unique capability to report metrics by section and DMA
  • Yieldex's superior forecasting capability
  • Yieldex's powerful reporting platform -- it is like a pivot talbe of DFP reporting
  • Yieldex's capability to track Salesperson Performance
  • Better visualization and dashboard will make it a perfect product.
  • The product concept is hard to master. More video training in addition to the interactive training may help.
  • More report templates will make my life easier since it takes time to build one.
Yieldex is well suited when you want to analyze yield. Gone are the days when people asked me for new reports and I turned them away. I can always create a new report quickly. However, it does not generate nice looking charts for you. You still need to download the report and create charts yourself.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AppNexus is being used by our Trading Desk - Affiperf. Affiperf is part of our specialties department and we handle several clients who buy programmatically and we decide which DSP to use for each campaign, and one of those DSPs is AppNexus.
  • Targeting geographically by cities and regions, it has better targeting capabilities compared to other DSPs.
  • More and various targeting contextual categories.
  • Budget pacing is really great and super accurate.
  • Customer Service - you don't have an account representative assigned to trading desks.
  • User interface is not easy - if you are new to the tool - it's not that easy to know how to set up everything.
  • There is no training or certification available for users.
It's well suited on certain types of campaigns - those who have specific inventory targeting or limited city targeting.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It was used as DMP for our programmatic enterprise system. We used AppNexus to pull daily spend reports in order to provide our clients with accurate reporting. I had to pull reports every day and had a good experience with the user interface. The reporting tool is easy to use and everything is relatively easy to find.
  • I only have experience using the reporting function in AppNexus which worked very well. I cannot speak so much for their cloud based platform.
  • The report saving function on the UI always seemed to have issues. I would save my reports all of the time but they would not store. In order to get around this I had to re-open recently made reports and adjust parameters in there. Although this is not a huge setback, it was still an inconvenience especially with daily reporting needs.
Use only by programmatic marketers
Lakshman Sharma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Hi Alan Cooke, Nice to e-meet you! We have been using AppNexus for one year. We are monetizing our inventory through the AppNexus platform and it's been pretty good so far and the support we get from them is very pleasing. AppNexus is being used by our entire organisation. We had a very good training session and the after relationship with our account manager is great. They provide all required information regarding how effectively one can use their platform and we earn knowledge from their wiki. On the whole we strongly recommend AppNexus to use.

  • As per my experience they have strong support personnel. Solving the issues as and when required.
  • We can solve certain issues like campaign performance, inventory optimization and more with the help of AppNexus wiki. We get all the required information in the Wiki itself.
  • They have given the right platform to both buyers and sellers to workout and meet their digital marketing needs and goals.
  • Every organisation whether small, medium or big will always have room for improvement. So in the case of AppNexus I think they are already one of the top digital market leaders.
  • Their platform is user friendly so there is no particular feature that is hard to use unless we don't know how to use it.
  • There is a small time consuming process we are recently facing and that is when creating users for a particular publisher account. Previously we used to get the random system generated password when we click on get password button which is available below the username. Now AppNexus has recently introduced a system in which a link will be sent directly to publisher email id and the publishers are allowed to set their own password and it is agreed. But the problem here is we are seeing invalid token messages from lot of our publishers that is due to link expiry which was sent by the AppNexus. So we have to create a new user for the publishers and it is a somewhat time consuming process. AppNexus might aware of this and they might be working on this.
There is no doubt about the platform performance but one should know about their needs before selecting. AppNexus is well suited for all the digital players to fulfill their goals.
November 19, 2014

Thumbs up to AppNexus!

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
AppNexus is used in two departments in our company: Media Solutions and RTB.

For Media Solutions: We implement display and facebook campaigns and run these campaigns live. When appropriate, we optimize and sent out reporting to client for the campaign.

For RTB: AppNexus is one of the DSPs used to access our open exchange. The RTB team monitors the exchange from publisher to DSP and optimizes toward removing any suspicious domains to make available premium quality impressions.
  • The reporting is easy to use and download. The metrics are laid out in a way where you just pick and check the box of how you want your report generated.
  • The UI is very user friendly, it's easy to find advertisers and campaigns filtered by active and inactive
  • I like the features once you find an advertiser and click on it, you can see all the options on the left hand side in process order to set up campaign, including reporting
  • AppNexus has a very useful wikipage with setup instructions including visuals for a better understanding.
  • The reporting metrics when you generate from Advertiser vs the Network tab are different. As an example, I was working on optimizing a FaceBook campaign by the Fold, and the reporting under the Advertiser did not have "Fold Position" but Network reporting has.
  • The UI changed since I last used, which was in December, therefore not familiar enough to give lots of negative feedback
AppNexus is an easy to use platform once proper formal training is given with a wealth of inventory from display to facebook.
March 07, 2014

RTB on AppNexus

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use AppNexus as our RTB (real time bidding) platform for all display and some mobile products sold by our sales department. It is used across the organization to target advertising exchanges using behavioral, content, and/or demographic targeting. We aim to garner the highest number of clicks possible for each advertiser that we we work with, so we use a variety of bidding models and targeting techniques to get the ads in front of the advertisers' most relevant audience on the internet.
  • User friendly -- setting up campaigns in AppNexus is straight forward, and done linearly so it makes sense.
  • Shows a good snapshot of each campaign from a high level -- it is easy to see which bidding and targeting models are used within the lines of the campaign without digging in too deeply.
  • Easy to stay organized -- AppNexus allows users to stay organized by offering things like folders that can keep multiple flights for the same advertiser organized.
  • Access to a lot of inventory -- AppNexus gives users access to a lot of inventory and underdelivery is rarely an issue.
  • Reporting -- reporting is slow, and requires pulling a separate report for each topic.
  • Creative auditing -- creative auditing is inconsistent. Sometimes an ad that failed audit can be pushed through audit again and pass without any changes being made.
  • Searching for campaigns -- searching for campaigns is cumbersome and oftentimes needs to be done manually at the advertiser level (rather than using the search box that appears at all times)
AppNexus is generally well suited for the majority of display campaigns, and is more limited (at this time) for mobile. CPC campaigns for both display and mobile is typically limited. The platform is better suited for CPM campaigns.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
AppNexus was used by my department for data aggregation. We dealt in Journals and it was of utmost importance to make sure that we kept everything clear and organized across the different journal subsets and AppNexus made that easy with it's many inventory options.
  • Inventory - Clear ways to define journals, dating methods and unique identifiers
  • Data is curated to make everything as useful as possible - you can see what makes people click and what doesn't
  • You can easily match IDs to see which pages were browsed, which were clicked and to figure out which ads the user has or has not seen
  • Data is only stored for a year, I'd like to see longer result storage
  • Sometimes it get confusing to find things based on the website organization
This is incredibly well suited to targeting audiences for scientific journals and making sure that users don't see repeat ads. We don't want to overload someone with the same thing and like to keep it all fresh and interesting while keeping our data relevant to ad exchanges and user click patterns.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
AppNexus is being used to buy inventory in the marketplace for clients to provide better strategies for them - it is used by our Trading Desk Department
  • Integrated with Peer39 to be able to customize startegies as needed (Retargeting, Content, Language, etc)
  • Build Domain Lists for clients to make sure they run where they are comfortable
  • If the data were real time that would make the system that much better
  • The delays in reporting are very inconvenient especially when trying to optimize campaigns using AppNexus data
The main question that I would ask - Am I using AppNexus data often (i.e daily) to help optimize my campaign. If so, that might be a problem as the data is available about every 4 hours which is reasonable, however, the outages and delays on reporting is quite often.
February 25, 2014

AppNexus user Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
System integration through the API in reporting statistics, inventory management, campaign management, and optimization. Used across our organization for various applications.
  • Inventory reach
  • Deeper reach to multiple exchange sources
  • FBX integration to strengthen capabilities
  • System downtime
  • Reporting delays
  • User-interface issues (bugs and design updates)
There are various business models and extensive ways that AppNexus may be suitable. For our platform, it's been beneficial to increase our reach to even more inventory. The optimization tools are valuable for expert users but may not be recommended for new users. Understanding a company's digital role in terms of service and value-add should be defined to select how this is beneficial.
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