Published in · 7 min read · Feb 5, 2020
Pay per click ads have played a larger role in online marketing in recent years, which has led to the introduction of bid management tools. We could go through every campaign and optimize bidding manually, but that would take several hours (hours that even the biggest businesses don’t have!). With bid management, businesses can optimize their campaigns and avoid wasting money, all with very little effort.
Before we suggest ten of our favorite bid management tools in the industry, we first want to explain the basics and what you can expect from this type of platform. As we explained in the introduction, these tools will allow you to optimize the bidding in your campaigns so you don’t have to do everything manually. Using clever algorithms, the tool will continually assess the effectiveness of your campaigns and fluctuate bids in order to reduce the cost per click of your ads.
Why invest in a tool like this? In the long term, your dollar will go further. It will also help you to get ads in front of your target market more effectively than the competition. What’s more, your own team will have more time to focus on the tasks that really matter. When it comes to online bidding in marketing, nothing can compete with a good bid management tool.
Hopefully we’ve convinced you that bid management tools are worthwhile. If not, there’s still time to look at those that capture the imagination of the industry. Without further ado, let’s have a look!
1. DoubleClick
Firstly, we have DoubleClick, which is popular across the globe. Acquired by Google in 2017, it forms part of the Google Marketing Platform. An obvious benefit of choosing this solution? You have the might of Google behind you. If something happens to go wrong or you need help, you can be certain that Google will provide you with answers.
As a marketing platform, it’s a brilliant option that’s widely recommended. DoubleClick not only helps with bidding, it also brings together the advertising and analytics aspects of your marketing strategy. With real-time insights and recommendations, it won’t be long before you see a veritable return on marketing investment.
2. Kenshoo
Here’s another service that has features beyond the valuable bidding offerings. As far as bidding features go, Kenshoo’s computerized budget management makes sure you will never overspend on ads. With bidding, there’s a delicate balance between overspending and wasting the budget, and underspending disallowing your ability to remain competitive. Kenshoo can help.
As a full digital advertising solution, they use location to target customers, share detailed real-time reports, and leverage various algorithms to improve keyword targeting. You can request a demo to get started today.
3. Outbrain
Outbrain operates in 50 countries and has partnerships with a variety of brands and publishers. Although there are many features that pique the interest of users, it’s the real-time bidding that often gets the most attention. Overall, they reach out to over 550 million people with 200 billion recommendations.
4. Acquisio
With Acquisio, you have a tool to track and manage all of your ad campaigns. Regardless of which search engine you use, you can boost campaign performance and ensure that you’re getting the results you want without overpaying. When we tested Acquisio, there were a few features that stood out to us: keyword search, cross-channel reporting, bulk importing and editing, and campaign creation tools. When you add in bidding management, even beginners will be able to improve their campaigns with little trouble.
5. OpenX
Judging by the statistics on their homepage, OpenX reaches out to nearly 250 million consumers per month and works with 30,000 advertisers and 500 supply partners. There are two options with this service, depending on whether you’re a marketer or a publisher. As soon as you visit the website, you will notice an emphasis on ‘people-based marketing’. They make a point to prioritize both you as the user, and the audience as the recipients of the ads.
6. Marin
The next producer of campaign management tools is Marin. With its bid management features, Marin will post ad campaigns onto your chosen search engines and social media platforms. From the moment you start working with Marin, you will have online accounts that are simple to use, and easier to navigate.
While bidding is the feature we’re focused on throughout this guide, we’d be remiss to breeze past Marin’s wealth of other useful features. For example, it can automatically evaluate keywords in order to boost not only the performance of ads, but visibility too. The dashboards allow you to make adjustments so that you’re always seeing data and information relevant to your goals. Finally, we love the charts and presentations that come with the analytics and reports section. If online bidding is covered by a whole team of people, these reports allow for a universal understanding of performance and progress.
7. SmartyAds
When it comes to real-time bidding platforms, SmartyAds may win for most innovative. It knows two of your leading concerns: you want to spend the right amount of money, and you want all ads to be relevant on Google’s SERP. With SmartyAds, you have an opportunity to achieve exactly this. Once SmartyAds is up and running, you can enjoy budget optimization, all while saving valuable time.
8. Clickable
Clickable is now owned by Syncapse, but their high-quality management tools remain the same. You’ll find that Clickable will have no trouble guiding you along the journey to increased revenue and visibility. Since the platform is integrated with social and search advertising, you can play around with bidding and find the right strategy that works for you. Similarly to the tools above, Clickable also offers competitive measurements and analytics. Some of the most valuable aspects of this service are the simplicity of the platform and interface.
By customizing your dashboard, you can view real-time data that’s specifically important to you. What’s more, the ActEngine feature will optimize bids and adjust the allocation of your budget depending on which ads are performing best. For example, if an ad has a high conversion rate, it will put more of your budget into this campaign while limiting those that aren’t generating results.
Read More: Google and Facebook Manual vs Automated Bid Optimization: Which is Better?
9. ClickEquations
As our penultimate suggestion, we recommend ClickEquations. Thanks to the automated bid management tools and other solutions, this service is the self-proclaimed ‘first intelligent paid search solution’. Whenever a campaign is underperforming, the user will get an alert based on insights that the tool has gathered.
The highest-impact keywords are separated, which gives marketers the opportunity to continually improve campaigns and results. With revenue attribution and advanced metrics, it’s easy to identify the source of ROI. Rather than wasting money, marketers can assess all campaign performances and examine where changes are needed.
10. Imonomy
Lastly, Imonomy is a platform that focuses on the images of an ad campaign. Every website has areas of high engagement, and Imonomy allows us to monetize them. Real-time analysis gives us the opportunity to optimize every impression’s value. To make sure all inventory is seen, the platform uses Dynamic Viewability Optimization. A single algorithm analyzes data and makes contextual and behavioral analyses before making improvements and suggesting changes.
We’ve laid out ten amazing bidding management tools above, but how do you differentiate and select one for your business? We recommend comparing your needs with the features of each service. Most are able to find a service that offers everything they need, which beats randomly choosing a service and making undue sacrifices.
If you opt for a free trial and don’t like the tool, cancel the trial and try another platform. As long as you let your team play with the tools and encourage feedback, you will find the one that optimizes your campaigns in a way that aligns with your business.
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