This is a paid sponsored post from AdClarity, however it is my honest opinion and what I actually think of the product.
I just got done with a demo from a newer company called AdClarity. Just like their name, they make online display advertising extremely clear and give you a ton of insight into what your competitors are doing. They help advertisers make more money off of the display ads and take away inventory from their competition as well as help ad networks find new publishers, lower costs and see who is advertising with who. Publishers also get a ton of clarity in an easy to use interface to know what is on their sites, how long it has been there and what they can do to cut out the networks and go direct making even more money. The tool has been out for 4 months but has been being built by AdClarity for over 2 years. I fell in love with the data it provides and give it 4 out of 5 stars for a tool for media buyers to gain “ad clarity” into their competition, for networks and for publishers. Here’s why it gets 4 out of 5 stars and why they didn’t get 5 for 5.
The bullets below will be a bit repetitive.
Publishers – A publisher in this case is a website or web property that has ads being served on it.
- See what ads are being served. One thing that this tool allows you to see is what ads are being served on your site, who the advertisers are, what the ads look like, the landing pages they send visitors to and the frequency that they are being served. With this information you can begin to reach out directly to the advertisers who have been running the longest and make a solid case as to why they should go direct with you. Not only can you make more money by cutting out the networks and mediators, but you can also see if your audience and readers are being exposed to things that can hurt your brand if you have non relevant ads showing on your site.
- Cut out the networks to make direct deals. With this tool, you can not only cut out networks like I mentioned above, but you can make direct deals and mention to the advertiser exactly where they were buying from. Besides the networks, sometimes ads are passed through two or three exchanges and you can reach out to those exchanges eliminating someone who was lowering your revenue profit to make more money from your ads. What’s also great is that you can see your competitors sites and who is advertising there. By doing this you can pull advertisers from them and make direct deals with them so you can gain some of their advertisers.
- See where your competitors are serving ads. If you are a publisher but also run ads to drive more traffic, you can see other sites and competitors ads, how long they have been running on each site they are on, each ad on the site and which landing pages they are using. You can then run their media budget up by buying space or compete directly with them for the traffic they have been going after.
- See the full campaign
- Ads – You get to see all ads that have been recorded (as well as first seen and last seen and frequency reports)
- Landing pages – You can see which ads pointed to which pages and even from which sites they were run on. You also get the share of voice on that site) This can help you to figure out what combinations of ads, networks and sites worked best for your competition and beat them at their own game.
- Start and End of the campaign – Because you can see the first occurrence and the last detected date, you can begin making assumptions about how well these campaigns are working and mimic or improve them.
- Share of Voice – The reports show you how much of the inventory was given on your site as well as competitors campaigns which can help you to know where they are spending most and who is spending the most on your site.
- Networks ads are being served through – You get a break down of the entire display network and mediators or exchanges from advertisers through the network, through a mediator, through another third party to the publisher, etc… This helps you cut out middle men to save money on ad spend and make more money by eliminating some of them from the ads.
Advertisers – Advertisers are given an amazing amount of data which can give you your competitors media spread and plan so you can take it and improve it. You also get a lot more clarity so that you can go direct to the publishers or cut out mediators.
- See where your ads are being served – Normally you don’t get to know exactly what sites your ads are being served on and on which pages. Now you can have a lot more clarity into where your ad campaigns are going and start to cut direct deals when you can track the effectiveness.
- Spy on your competition – You can follow and watch your competition to see their ad campaigns and copy, when they launch new campaigns and who they are going through as well as up their spend by entering or create better campaigns taking inventory from them and by morphing what they started with and improving them.
- Lower costs by removing the middle man – Because you can see everyone within the process of how your ad is served, you can cut out ad networks, mediators, third parties, etc… and go with a network that does a direct display, find new networks who have inventory and also go direct with the sites you discover your ads on.
Ad Networks – Ad Networks can use this tool to discover when their competitors get new clients, where they are being served and can use this information to look at their own inventory, find new publishers as well as find out who is starting to spend money on ads to build new business.
- Find new clients – You get to see who is starting with your competitors and can reach out to these new advertisers to increase your business.
- Find new publishers – You can see where your competitors are serving ads which means you can find new publishers and cut custom deals for inventory.
- See where you can cut out other mediators – Enables you to cut out mediators or exchanges that you didn’t know were running your ads and upping your costs.
Things in the future –
- Monitoring more types of media like Text, Video, Mobile, Social Sites and even potentially Adware like Pop Ups.
- Right now AdClarity covers 30K sites in 7 countries and within 2 to 4 months they are hoping to have 100K+ sites and include Australia.
- Adding new reporting like GAP analysis, new advertisers and new entity comparison reports.
Cool Things –
- Alerts – One of the things I liked most are the alerts you can set up to be instantly notified when your competition or whatever you want to know has an update.
Downsides –
- Limited time recorded – You can only get a 90 day period in the system. I would prefer at least a years worth of data to see seasonality. This is a huge downfall for their system. You can however export the information into Excel, but you have to keep track of it then instead of having it exist online or in a nice online report.
Overall I really like AdClarity. I would definitely use it if I had a client that needed a tool like this. The pricing is a bit steep at $500 per month or $5000 per year, but if you are spending on ad serving and display, that is nothing because the tool is definitely worth it’s weight with the amount of data it provides you with. Overall AdClarity gets 4 out of 5 stars.
