AM

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

2/9/2018

"Adstage review"

4/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

Single source for aggregating social campaign data Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

Reporting UI could be improved with better widgets Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AM

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

2/8/2018

"yea what a great product"

5/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

It's automated functionally makes compiling reports a breeze Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

Some of the modules could be more functional Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ST

Scott T.

Senior Digital Marketing Manager

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

1/31/2017

"A Central Hub For Digital Advertising "

5/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

I had been looking at Ad Management platforms for years, and most have been optimized for huge agencies and ask for over a hundred thousand dollars a year or a significant percentage of your spend. This is the first platform I analyzed that checked all of my wishlist and cost less than hiring a team of helpers instead. The ability to compile all of our activity within a central database and export it made it worth the annual cost alone! I have also found AdStage to be my favorite place to create new LinkedIn Ads, as their interface is simp[ly better and repetitive tasks are streamlined. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

AdStage can feel a little rough around the edges at times as it is a younger product. Outside of LinkedIn, I still prefer to use the native networks for ad creation as ad features and targeting options change faster than AdStage can update. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AdStage:

AdStage is probably the first platform you should check out. It checked all my boxes and it came in at a price that made my jaw drop. It was the easiest software investment approval I have ever experienced and offered us many more features than what we expected at the price point. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AdStage solving and how is that benefiting you?

The biggest issue we were facing was being active in many places at the same time and not being able to get a macroview on these efforts without manually splicing together a spreadsheet from 5 different exports. We now have our Advertising data piped into a data dashboard that is updated live, freeing up 4+ hours a week for me. As I mentioned before, it made scaled activity on LinkedIn much more possible for a one-man army like myself as that ad interface has no options for power users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AM

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

2/15/2018

"Reasonable reporting software -management, not so much"

3/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

Easy report building

Clear, easy metrics Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

Printing too faint on reports

Limited formatting options

No opportunity to add comments or additional verbiage in the report body Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UH

Verified User in Higher Education

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

2/8/2018

"Strong Partner for DR Advertisers"

4/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

Easy management and reporting with amazing customer support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

Ability to change attribution window and infrequent discrepancy between AdStage pixel and our internal reporting as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UC

Verified User in Computer Software

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4/18/2016

"Critical to our paid social and search"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

The ability to optimize our ads according to time of day and day of week. The day parting has been a critical feature to our online advertising. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

There are times when it seems easier to create ads in the native UI, but I don't think I've fully mastered the tools within adstage. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UI

Verified User in Internet

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

8/3/2016

"Great functionality for a great price, still has room to grow as a platform"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

Budget control and performance data across search engine and social platform campaigns.

The UI is easy to use and pleasant to look at.

They are iterating quickly on tools, so the platform is getting more robust in a hurry.

It's an affordable platform that delivers high value.

Campaign builder tools for social ads are easy to use.

They incorporate updates from the search engines quickly when they become available. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

Detailed reporting across platforms has been a little light (this is getting better, though)

The campaign builder tools for search engines are not as easy to use as going straight to the platforms themselves.

Bidding rules functionality is a bit limiting compared to what I'd like to be able to do with my search engine campaigns. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AdStage:

This tool is a no-brainer if your paid advertising skews towards social platforms versus search engines, though they're no slouches on the search side.

Make sure that you can get the reporting you need before committing. They've been a little light in this area until only very recently. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AdStage solving and how is that benefiting you?

We needed a less expensive platform than what we were previously using. Our paid search and paid social spend is a little too small when it comes to the existing tools landscape (too small for the really big automation players like Kenshoo and Marin) and we had been using a barebones setup with Adobe Media Optimizer, so the value wasn't really there for what we had to pay.

AdStage is a perfect fit cost-wise and delivers 90% of the functionality that we need on the search side while adding critical paid social management that we didn't have yet. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

EC

Edward C.

Online Marketing Program Manager

Nanotechnology

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

5/6/2016

"I have not even begun to scratch the surface, but it has improved our overall efficiency already!"

5/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

AdStage is an ambitious cloud-base digital advertising management application. And by ambitious, I mean that it offers a wealth of money and time-saving features that allow me to launch, edit, manage, and halt multiple campaigns either manually, or by using programmed rules, and advanced scheduling options. What I like best about the platform is its ambitious nature. It's clear that the over-arching goal of the team is to make life easier for the beleaguered marketing program manager. Does this mean that some features may need a little work or optimization as new features roll-out? Of course, but that gets me to the second thing I like about the product, the AdStage team is dedicated to customer service and they have a built in technical support chat system that is proactively managed by the entire team. They are eager tohelp me troubleshoot issues, respond to questions about server-up time or slow-downs, They take comments on features that we'd like to see or changes that might make our work easier. It really feels like we are partners in creating the ultimate ad management system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

Well, as an intermediary layer between a variety of stand-alone 1st party advertising platforms (LinkedIn, Big, Google AdWords, Twitter and Facebook), there are times when things do not work exactly as you would like. In some cases, these are existing limitations of the 1st party platforms that AdStage cannot really improve independently, In other cases, there maybe one helpful feature of the 1st party platform that was not used in AdStage. Generally, I am thinking of small issues, like, in LinkedIn, it is easy to basically copy and paste all of the variables of a campaign on a high level page, while, in AdStage, I actually have to open the campaign to edit, in order to get that list. The other thing that was an issue early on, and occasionally still is, is the overall weight of moving data from platform to platform. It can be slow to respond. Which only really irritates when a deadline or last-minute request hits your desk. But again, I always feel that the team is doing all they can to optimize the system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AdStage:

If they are still offering a trial, go for it. Focus on the value that having a single source for creating, managing and reporting on campaigns brings. Keep in mind that AdStage is working very closely with the 1st parties to ensure that they succeed. This is critical.

Once in the system:

Keep your instance tidy.

Devise and adhere to a campaign naming convention that is meaningful.

Initially, be careful with your budgets. It is easy to get overwhelmed managing multiple platforms from a single interface

Keep a folder to archived and deleted campaigns. Use the built-in Conversion Tracking! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AdStage solving and how is that benefiting you?

Like many companies, we have lots of requests, tons of ambition, loads of MBOs but scant resources to get all the work done. We are a lean team. Managing multiple campaigns across multiple platforms is a complete time suck. Having one centralized platform to manage everything is a no-brainer. We have made one person responsible for what 4 people used to do part-time and not very efficiently. Generating reports is made a lot easier, and we are even able to set-up success parameters that help to validate what GA and our automated marketing platform is telling us. With better budget management built into the system, we have eliminated unpleasant surprises when a campaign goes awry. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

JF

Justin F.

Senior Digital Media & Technology Analyst

Marketing and Advertising

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

12/30/2016

"AdStage is a great tool to report on Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter"

4/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

Very intuitive UI and great customer service! I'd recommend AS to any Digital agency or medium-sized company. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

Some of the technology is still in Beta, so there are some data issues at times. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

LS

Lennie S.

Director of Candidate Acquisition

Internet

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4/14/2016

"In a class of its own"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AdStage?

AdStage is a easy and affordable solution for cross-channel reporting and management of our performance marketing channels. They have deep integrations with all of our major advertising platforms: Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Bing, which is rare amongst available alternatives. They also have an extremely responsive customer service team that consistently incorporates feedback into the product roadmap. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AdStage?

It can be a bit slow when loading large quantities of data. Our organization also relies heavily on tying offline events with online marketing activities, and we have to utilize different solutions to tie all of our performance data together---which ultimately meant a bespoke solution for full funnel reporting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AdStage solving and how is that benefiting you?

Deploying spend across multiple accounts on multiple networks is a challenge for both management and reporting. AdStage gave us a simple solution to unite much of this data and a suite of tools that offer significant production & management advantages over the native interfaces of many ad platforms. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.