Hi all,

Just curious to see if anyone managed to test and compare third party bid management tools (that take conversions into consideration) vs google’s own ability to do so (Enhanced CPC or CPA bidding)?

Google obviously has access to internal data that other tools don’t have but, given the fact that their algorithm doesn’t always pick the most suitable Ad, I’m not sure how optimum (or ‘unbiased’) their automated bidding can get.

Any experience comparing the two? Are there any case studies done on the above?

Thanks

I’m not sure of any case studies; I’m sure acquision or marin must have one.

I find that Google is ‘good enough’ for most small to mid level budgets; and even some high ones when CPA is your goal.

Where Google really fails is when you have variable checkout prices as Google does not take order value into account; hence why you need bid management more in ecommerce than sometimes in lead gen or static CPA environments (although, with huge accounts bid management can often be useful).

I tried a few different bid management systems for a lead gen site.

A couple of the bid management softwares did outperform Google’s CPA bidding by a small margin. The cost of the software was more than what it saved my client. I went back to CPA bidding through Google AdWords and my client is happier.

Thanks Brad.

Amanda, thanks for your input. I also reached the conclusion that the very few bid management platforms that seem to work are overly expensive.

Was Optimine one of the softwares you tested? They ‘guarantee’ a 25% reduction using their platform.

I didn’t use them. Their salesperson was so annoying I walked away from them.

I’m after a bid management solution and was wondering if anybody has any recommendations?

We’re in life insurance, which means incredibly high bids and not a huge number of sales, so sales attribution has to be spot on (i.e. able to update it via API, not rely on Adwords tracking, which is picking up about 1/2 of sales!)

I watched an online demo of Acquiseo, which was perfect. Really, very impressive. However they weren’t willing to let us try the software to see if it fits our needs without spending £2,000 for 3 months. Not a very justifiable risk, and it’s as if they have something to hide!

Also tried out Marin, who I was very unimpressed with.

Any other ideas? Thanks

Once you get past Marin and Acquisio, the other big one to check out is Kenshoo.

The biggest knock against them a few years ago is that they were great for ecommerce (they were once a shopping comparison system) but they weren’t great for lead gen. In the past couple of years, I’ve heard a lot more people being very pleased with them.

I have not used their system, so I can’t speak to its capabilities – but it is another large player in the bid management arena.

My company uses Efficient Frontier and they are very good. But only if you spend more than US$ 150k.
And don´t forget about the learning curve.

Efficient Frontier and Kenshoo are model basd (statistics) and Marin is rule based.