Item: Adobe Advertising Cloud
Rating: 2
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe Media Optimizer was being used only by the Paid Search team, of whom I am a part of. As a person handling the paid search account for a website with over a million products, and over hundreds of categories, we used AMO to primarily help us handle our bids, especially with Product Listing Ads.

Pros and Cons

The ability to automate our bids was very useful, so that we wouldn't have to focus on it.
While it took awhile at first, the bid strategies worked to varying degrees of success. This allowed us to have different strategies based on the categories of our products and other factors.
The ability to create Text Ads based on your Data Feed (Advanced Campaign Management) was also super useful.

the UI was horrible and slow, and generally not very user friendly. Just trying to do something was a chore, because of the how bad the UI was.
Documentation and Support left a lot to be desired. Had a hard time finding out how to do something on our own, so we had to email our rep a LOT. Whatever little documentation they had, had very little information.
Very slow to react to budget changes. We would have budget cuts and budget increases, and while making changes in the UI, it seemed like it took a week for the changes to take affect. That can't happen in a fast moving industry like ours.
Implementation was a HUGE pain in the ass.

Return on Investment

ROAS increased at first, but tapered off over time.
Less time spent on worrying about bids, and more time on focusing at strategy.
Less control over monthly budget.

Alternatives Considered

DoubleClick,Kenshoo Search,Marin Software

I was not involved in the selection of AMO, however, we did evaluate several other vendors. Of the three vendors we reviewed, all seemed to have better UIs, better support, more powerful options for strategies, and over all, just less of a hassle to run. Each vendor had their strengths and weaknesses, and they may not work as well as Adobe, but they seemed to be much less of a hassle to get things up and running, compared to AMO.

Likelihood to Renew

As of this writing, we have just discontinued our use of Adobe Media Optimizer. Other vendors gave us a better rate, a better contract option, and the product is just better than what we had with Adobe at the time. We may revisit Adobe again at the future, but it seems like they have a lot of work to do to catch up with the leader in the space.

Likelihood to Recommend

If your budget does NOT change often and is flexible, Adobe Media Optimizer will probably do its thing, and do it half-way decent. However, if you like to have a modicum of control over your campaign (especially in budget), even while having a media optimizer, automate your bids, then this might not be the best option.

Also, FYI, it was the last to market (of the major vendors we reviewed) to support the new Google Shopping.

Support Rating

Our reps were great. They got back to us fairly quickly and told us how to do things. However, documentation for Adobe was not very good. In fact, we had to go to our reps so much because Adobe Media Optimizer left a lot to be desired with its documentation and support.

Adobe Advertising Cloud Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Quick Initial Response	Not kept informed Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times

Adobe Media Optimizer is good, if you don't care about control.

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Media Optimizer