--- title: Google Ad Manager Reviews meta_title: 'Google Ad Manager Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 236 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Google Ad Manager works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 236 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: Digital Advertising Tech url: https://www.g2.com/categories/digital-advertising-tech --- # Google Ad Manager Reviews **Vendor:** Google **Category:** [Publisher Ad Server Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/publisher-ad-server) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 236 ## About Google Ad Manager DoubleClick for Publishers is a complete ad revenue engine that helps publishers capture the full value of every impression across demand sources and channels. Seamless integration with DoubleClick Ad Exchange provides instant connection to millions of quality advertisers, while the natively integrated sales management platform streamlines operations for maximized sales at minimized costs. ## Google Ad Manager Reviews ### 1. I've lost my phone **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris S. | Managing Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2022 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** A rise in Google search ratings is great **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** Useless no quality or lead replies is bad **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** Make sure you exclude words you don't need to hear from your advert being misunderstood. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** I remain in Google searches and in the rankings ### 2. Google Ad Manager has had a UI facelift, but core elements of the UX are still confusing **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Evan W. | UX Lead, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 22, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** As part of a marketing team, I've been using Google Ad Manager for the better part of a year. We use the app to deliver house banner ads on our website for promotions. The app allows us to schedule when ads should display and rotate different creatives throughout the promotion. The analysis it provides and integration with Google Analytics is helpful to see the impact on the business. The creatives can be delivered for various screen sizes and resolutions. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** The delivery of ads are broken out into three elements we use: • Orders • Line items • Creatives When creating an order, you have to define a line item, and each line item needs creatives. I often find that when you schedule an ad to be delivered, Ad Manager tells you it's not ready and requires creatives, even when I've already attached creatives to the line item. It can take several minutes for the system to recognize this and confuses me as a user each time. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can deliver ads that are high-resolution images for high resolution displays and track the success rates of our promotions. ### 3. Has basic functionalities but you need to have a lot of knowledge to use all features. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Publishing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 21, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** Allows novices to upload ads. The targeting functionality is generally accurate when there are few restrictions on deliverability. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** Using complicated ad tags is not intuitive and there is a lot of room for error if you are not well-verses in display ads. **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** Great tool for basic display ad uploading. Worth investing some money if you need more advanced capabilities (i.e. uploading ad tags vs. jpeg images). **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Launching display ads on a website. Allows you to have complete control over this process instead of working with a third party. ### 4. an easy and reliable platform to realize advertising platforms **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** antony s. | It is an excellent platform to maintain the exchange of information, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** excellent platform to streamline advertising platforms in an evolutionary and practical way as to achieve optimize the reach of the ads and thus generate higher revenues **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** at the time of hiring this type of platform presented problems when making the payment but it was something easy to solve **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is a beneficial platform to use to provide greater reach to the company through advertising platforms and thus generate higher revenues ### 5. Using google ad managers across all of WB media. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** Google support is extremely useful. Easy to use UI. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** The load time is a bit wonky and can get stuck. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using it to mainly traffic ads. ### 6. Has its Pros & Cons **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** I like that the interface is user friendly for the most part. It is usually easy to naturally pick up on how to add/pull something. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** From a campaign setup side of things, not being able to flight campaigns is a huge issue. The system is often slow when you add too many lines - which you are forced to do since you can't easily flight. It would also be nice to receive notifications for when things are complete. Reporting is not always 100% accurate either (quartile reporting for example). **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** Push them to make campaign setup easier for Publishers. This would help solve many business issues and make work must easier for planners. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to forecast campaigns & track them both internally and using 3P reporting. This is the bulk of our business, so it is making things move. Additionally, a majority of our clients use Doubleclick for 3P tracking - making our partnership easier. ### 7. DFP Review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Publishing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 22, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** I think overall it has an easy user experience if you are familiar with digital terms/how ads work. I think that if you are an account manager / campaign manager it's the most universal program **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** I don't like how many steps it takes to take 'screenshots' of ad units / placements **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** I would make it more user friendly **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are looking to solve issues of discrepancies between first and third party tracking ### 8. DoubleClick. The Trafficking Solution for Rich Media **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dwight M. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** I like the way DoubleClick worked with Flash and continues to work now that we've transitioned to HTML5 animation through GWD. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** The association and QA process is frequently somewhat laborious for us. **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** Take the time to roll this out properly to users and you will reap the benefits in time saved reagrding malfunctioning creatives and unhappy clients. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Trafficking and troubleshooting rich media to and with our ad operations team. If an ad previews properly in DCS, it's likely to have no issues once live. ### 9. Double click Review **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lauren P. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** It’s effecienct and has a great ability to target within our needs **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** it’s clunky and not user friendly, there is a lot of manual work to inout **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Serving our ads, needed more targeting ### 10. DoubleClick Review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Katie L. | Media Operations, Marketing and Advertising, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 22, 2017 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** It was easy to go between multiple accounts and would load the data very quickly. You could also save different filters for reporting and that would work on all the different accounts. It was also very useful in terms of uploading multiple campaigns at once or whole new accounts. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** There were few things that I disliked about DoubleClick. Compared to other platforms, there could be some updates on the amount of visuals that DoubleClick offers for reporting. **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** Take advantage of the customer service line. They are very beneficial and will take time walking you through anything. I mostly benefited from them with help of bulk sheets to make changes across all my accounts. I would try to get in office support as much as possible and utilize any trainigns that they have to offer. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were able to pull all of our data from different engines into one platform for easier reporting. It benefited us by not having to pull and multiple reports and combining them. We were also able to make multiple uploads across different engines in one bulk sheet. ### 11. DFP for Centralized Ad Performance Reporting **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Media Production | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** DFP is well documented and highly customizable for even the most complex ad products. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** Reporting interface is very clunky and unintuitive. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use DFP to track all of our advertiser impressions and as a guideline for revenue reporting. ### 12. Limited Creative Capabilities but Expansive Network **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 21, 2017 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** Extensive partnerships and clean traffic for campaigns. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** Creative approval process is tedious and it's hard to get clear direction on the issue. **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** It's worth it when you can figure out the algorithm for what creatives are approved and not approved. Google has assigned different companies to help with support which is nice. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Looking for inventory sources for our clients to fulfill campaigns and used as a third party ad server for specific campaigns. ### 13. Great for basic ad operations and management **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 09, 2017 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** I liked that you can track the progress of the ad campaigns and the analytics were easy to pull. It was also great to have all our campaigns in one place, that you can copy a campaign, and the geotarget feature. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** I think the way campaigns (or line items/orders in DFP) could be organized better. It may just be the way our company managed ad campaigns, but it is difficult to find a specific campaign unless you know the exact way you named it. It would be nice to be able to organize by date or month, or even by brand or type of campaign (rather than having to rely solely on the naming convention). **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** As someone who had little prior experience with ad operations and management, I found DFP fairly easy to use. However, you may need to have your own way of keeping track of campaigns/ads loaded because it can be hard to search back for a specific campaign. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** It was definitely helpful having a place to keep all our ad campaigns and be able to track the analytics and measure how successful the campaign was. ### 14. DoubleClick for Publishers **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** The ability to change my dynamic content **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** When a client does not give allow me to have proper access **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Dynamic content issues ### 15. DoubleClick **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 23, 2017 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** Hosts all ads in one place so its easy to view performance on each and make adjustments to campaign where ads are performing the best **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** You need to be very tech savvy to use the platform. It's not as simple as something like Mailchimp which is very easy, no-brainer for anyone to use **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** Technical skill set required, not user friendly **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Campaign monitoring and reports are easier to pull together ### 16. Only use a small bit but **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lorna H. | Art Instructor, Retail, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** It is easy to navigate and find things. If you dont know where anything is, you can get fast support. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** We run a lot of stuff on it so it can be a bit slow here and there **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it to load web ads onto our websites. Definitely efficient and easy to manage everything together throughout the business. ### 17. Not very good, but there is no other free alternative. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Miguel P. | Founder, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2016 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** Its free and it works under Google Infrastructure (when it works). It supports numerous banner and video formats and reports are very detailed. It has multi user support and it works (somewhat) with all kinds of SDKs, from web to mobile (even with gaming frameworks). **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** No official support. The user interface is awful, when something fails error messages and codes doesn't tell you much and since there is no official support besides community forums, problems can be dragged forever or simply get unsolved. You can't rename or delete stuff, that is simply ridiculous. You need to update something? Rename it, upload a new one, create filters to avoid having to see the old one and so on, absolutely cumbersome. This applies for creatives, companies, campaigns, everything. This product has being around for quite sometime but it still has problems on a regular basis, on the other hand, the team in charge of the product reacts in a timely manner. **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** There is actually no other free alternative right now, so I say go with this if only you can't or want to afford another solution. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** A free hosted ad server solution, there is no other real alternative. ### 18. Double Click review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2017 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** The level of reporting that Double Click offers - able to show interesting insights that Atlas was not able to share. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** The reporting interface. I'm very used to Atlas so it was a bit of a learning curve. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Trying to better understand the clients target audience. Certain reporting capabilities within double click help with this ### 19. It works **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2017 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** It integrantes with other Google products. And It ia relativily cheap. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** The API could be easier to use and It could have a verter integration with Google apps script. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solves my necessário with programatic ads. ### 20. DFP **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** It's easy to use for small publishers and they offer easy-to-integrate demand sources. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** Not compatible with a lot of major players in the industry so it makes it difficult for those publishers to seek incremental revenue. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** They have strong demand sources and publishers are able to dive into the world of online advertising on their website. ### 21. DFP light user **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 16, 2016 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** the easy way that you can set up deals and set the priority. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** Some problems with google policies make difficult sometimes to start the deals **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** they have to make easy the dealing procces and the setting for non expert users **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creative audit statuss is most common issue that we have to solve ### 22. A leading product for all platforms and devices in need of few improvements **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Broadcast Media | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 31, 2014 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** I like best the general Google feel & look and also the Google search style, even if there are some limitations on this as well. As an adserver I think is great, only once recently the ad server stopped delivering all ads for a couple of hours. Also, you can serve display, video, mobile, Apps ads all from the same interface and platform. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** There are many things I dislike. While for example the general Google look & feel is great there is too much of scrolling in a vertical and horizontal way that is required to find what you need. Also, I hate the fact that you cannot target continents but you have to group countries and know well the geography! Reporting is probably the area where Google would need to do some work, there is always something that is missing in terms of fields or filters and you have to do lots of work to get what you want. It is also a very US-centric product which is an issue if you serve ads across all the globe and you follow local industry practises. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** This product help publishers to serve display, video and mobile/Apps ads across all platforms and devices, including programmatic so there is no need of other ad server products. It also helps with reporting and billing & reconciliation even if they can improve these areas a lot in my opinion especially also for non-US publishers. The benefit is having everything in one place. ### 23. DFP For Ad Serving **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tony B. | Senior Technical Producer, Ad Operations Support, Online Media **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2015 **What do you like best about Google Ad Manager?** Can scale up to the most demanding needs in terms of amount of ads served. Closest to industry standard for ad serving. **What do you dislike about Google Ad Manager?** Unexpected outages. Lack of a clear roadmap for features. **Recommendations to others considering Google Ad Manager:** The server can handle a great deal of traffic, but support can be slow to respond if needed. **What problems is Google Ad Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Large Scale Ad serving. ## Google Ad Manager Discussions - [How do I use Google Ad Manager?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-use-google-ad-manager) - 1 comment - [Is Google Ad Manager An SSP?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-google-ad-manager-an-ssp) - 2 comments - [What is Google Ad Manager used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-google-ad-manager-used-for) - 1 comment - [View Google Ad Manager pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/google-ad-manager/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-13+07%3A23%3A17+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=082d622d-13d4-4252-ab36-b67f715615ca&secure%5Btoken%5D=0f5883d325deb996c022fb86e36e5139c998efbde9ae434b2af1182c9f5d0c98&format=llm_user) ## Google Ad Manager Integrations - [Data Studio](https://www.g2.com/products/data-studio/reviews) ## Google Ad Manager Features **Platform - App Monetization Platforms** - Automated Tools - Campaign Management - Audience Targeting - In-App Purchases - Reporting & Dashboards - A/B Testing - AI Algorithms - Integration APIs - Fraud Prevention - Cross-Platform Support - Payment Integration - User Data Analysis - Subscription Management - Performance Analytics - Multiple Monetization Models **Ad Serving & Management - Publisher Ad Server** - Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Support - Ad Delivery Optimization & Management - Ad Inventory Management - Dynamic Ad Placement - Ad Tag Management - Bid Management - Banner Management - Template Management - Advertising Management - Campaign Management - Channel Management - Content Management - Real-Time Data - Multiple File Format Support **Agentic AI - Supply Side Platform (SSP)** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Advertising - App Monetization Platforms** - Ad Exchange - Offerwall - Bidding - Ad Mediation - Ad Formats - Ad Optimization **Targeting & Personalization - Publisher Ad Server** - Geo-Targeting - A/B Testing for Ads - Multi-Device & Cross-Platform Delivery - Audience Targeting - Frequency Capping - Contextual Targeting **Monetization & Reporting - Publisher Ad Server** - Header Bidding Support - Ad Revenue Share & Payout Management - Revenue Forecasting - Performance & Engagement Analytics - Website Analytics - Reporting/Analytics - Impression Forecasting **SSP Functionality ** - SSP Functionality **Agentic AI - Publisher Ad Server** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - AI/Machine Learning - Third-Party Integrations - Media Planning - Campaign Planning **Additional Functionality** - Filtering - Multi-Channel Marketing - Customizable Reports - A/B Testing - Generative AI - Activity Dashboard - Data Import/Export - API - Mobile Ad Serving - Engagement Tracking - Customizable Branding - Newsletter/Email Ad Serving - Real-Time Monitoring - Role-Based Permissions - Native Ad Serving - Click Tracking - Ad Optimization - Social Advertising - Ad Tag - Rich Media Ad Serving - Performance Metrics - Email Marketing - Video Ad Serving - Customizable Templates - Prioritization - Conversion Tracking - Search/Filter - Multi-Campaign - Ad Unit Creation - Drag & Drop - AI Copilot **SSP** - Ad Unit Availability - Impression Targeting - Floor Price - Advertiser Restrictions - Bid Reporting ## Top Google Ad Manager Alternatives - [OpenX](https://www.g2.com/products/openx/reviews) - 3.2/5.0 (18 reviews) - [PubMatic](https://www.g2.com/products/pubmatic/reviews) - 3.2/5.0 (11 reviews) - [Equativ](https://www.g2.com/products/equativ/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (11 reviews)