How to choose an automation system

Automation systems of contextual advertising are used by both advertisers and agencies, since they simplify the work and allow to increase the effectiveness of the campaign. But often the question arises: which system is suitable for a particular business? Experts from ArrowMedia (Kokoc Group) are helping to find the answer.

Micro businesses (up to 30,000 rubles per month for advertising) are primarily suitable for one-window contextual advertising management systems, which are also called aggregators. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that an advertiser can manage contextual advertising from different systems - that is, see Yandex.Direct, Google AdWords, social networks in one window. Moreover, it is possible to cover all sources on the market: if you create an ad in one of them, the aggregator will automatically copy it into all the others. It is noteworthy that such services have a rather simple interface, which even a novice specialist can figure out. Examples of control systems contextual advertising "one window": eLama.ru, Aori, htraffic.ru.
')
Small and medium businesses (up to 300,000 - 500,000 rubles per month for advertising) will be useful generators to create ads in Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords based on the product range of the site and automatically manage them. The most interesting of these services are online stores with a large assortment, which have the need to create thousands, tens of thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of ads. They can also be used to edit ads in automatic mode in the event that a product, for example, has changed its price or is no longer available. Generators are present in K50, Alytics, Spear. Moreover, almost every agency has a similar development on the contextual advertising market. For example, ArrowMedia (Kokoc Group) created the AdPro module, which allows you to automate advertising for online stores and manage it in Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords.

Big business (from 500,000 rubles and more per month for advertising) has to face additional difficulties:

- Consolidation of reports from multiple sources of attracting traffic, the analysis of which takes considerable time. Automation systems can solve the problem and aggregate the received information in one interface in conjunction with analytics systems and CRM data. This saves time and allows you to quickly respond to changes. In addition, when bundled with CRM, the client will be able to manage the advertisement, taking into account the real profit from the source, campaign or keyword.

- The problem of growth. Often, big business makes high-quality contextual advertising, and the campaign reaches its maximum, and current automation tools (for example, generators) do not allow for greater results. There are two ways to solve the problem. The first is to hire analysts who will try to find non-trivial opportunities to increase the conversion of advertising. The second is to establish a conversion optimizer, the algorithms of which analyze the data flow, build a forecast based on it and give recommendations on budget redistribution or KPI change. For example, the system can offer the following: “If you now raise the rate by 10%, this will lead to the fact that you will receive 20% more sales, and the cost of attracting them will be only 5% higher than the current one”. You can confirm the actions proposed by the system, and it will manage the bids automatically without any external participation. Conversion optimizers can have a significant effect, but they only work with a large data stream. In my experience, you need to collect at least 300 conversions (goal achievement) per month for an advertising campaign, before the optimizer starts to show the result.
Independently configure this service is difficult. Therefore, it is an acceptable option to rent an optimizer at an agency, at the same time having received expertise and a “support service”. Examples of conversion optimizers: foreign - Marin Software, Adobe AdLens, Russian - K50, Alytics.

If we compare Russian contextual advertising management systems and foreign ones, then, taking into account changes in the economy of our country, the first ones become more popular. Foreign services accept all payments in foreign currency - someone in dollars, someone in euros, so they have risen in price significantly due to the crisis. And Russian systems can offer a product of not inferior quality for affordable money. Moreover, domestic developments can boast of better technical support, since foreign systems use it in a foreign language, which creates additional difficulties.

Different businesses using automation systems solve various tasks:

- they help small companies to save money on a specialist, since it becomes not necessary to hire a new employee in order to manage advertising in various sources;

- mid-level advertisers will be able to save time when creating and editing numerous ads, and make advertising relevant, because with the help of automation systems, it will display actual prices and products;

- to large companies, such complex systems as conversion optimizers will help to achieve the most effective result even in the case when it seems that it is impossible to improve the advertising campaign.