Smartly Reviews & Product Details

Template editor - when I need to adapt creatives to different languages, there is no better tool than smartly :) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Till now I used mostly template editor. It's great and I really like it but it might include more options similar to adobe tools. Right now some of them are missing, most annoying is that I need to separately open PS to use pippete tool and check color, or externally crop images and upload them again to smartly. Those are minor things which are easy to bypass with external tool but sometimes annoying. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The real power of Smartly lies in it's "back end" abilities to create dynamic, targeted ads with minimal building. My experience with it, however, is mostly "front end," meaning that I use it to design templates, so my view of Smartly is more as a tool along the lines of Photoshop/After Effects. In this regard, Smartly is surprisingly capable as a layout/motion graphics tool. Of course it is a limited incarnation of the Adobe products but I have been able to build assets with an unexpected amount of control over the elements. I am also able to deliver templates to teammates who are able to modify them to their specific uses without having extensive knowledge of the more complex, traditional tools. This is a credit to Smartly's relative ease of use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

To answer this question I fired up Smartly to see what stuck out as a deficiency but nothing lept out for me. If I had a wish list I would like to see some improvements around the motion transitions. There is a great, basic set in place but control over them is quite limited (no F-curve for example). Another improvement could be around masking. As it is, I am forced to use square shapes to conceal items and to control where they are revealed and this gets to be difficult when organizing layers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's versatility--you can automate creative to not only run through campaigns, but you can use it to develop winning dynamic creative that removes a lot of the headaches of traditional development. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nothing really, I would say if I had to say something, it would be a better NLE system for video, it's a little limited but does the job for now. It could have more effects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The 24/5 support chat is undoubtedly Smartly's best feature. To have hundreds of specialists available online and ready to help you with anything from campaign set-up to API use cases is completely unique. Organisations that don't use Smartly are really missing out on this expert knowledge! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There's very little I dislike about Smartly. Occasionally there might be a delay in making certain features available that are already accessible in Ads Manager, but the team is quick to ensure minimal disruption. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ability to find all the social media campaigns on one platform Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The sync of Facebook with Smartly API sometimes takes time, and as a result, the work gets delayed. The occasional bugs are difficult to deal with. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The interface is really intuitive compared to any other platform I've used - it's so much easier to change and schedule multiple ads. My clients also really like the custom template feature for dynamic retargeting ads and usually witness improved results when using them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I'm not a massive fan of the triggers section - the on and off areas don't seem to make any sense as functionally they offer the same options. I also find it frustrating that the only to add ads to dynamic campaigns is manually through the campaigns, unlike the static ads, which can be added simultaneously through the campaign view. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Smartlys support the most. The 24/5 chat that I can always find available. Answers are always very quick to come by Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The learning curve is pretty significant. Additionally, it'd be tough to learn how to create _helpful_ pivots without a lot of knowledge in setting up a columns Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The support received from Smartly team is convenient and helpful whenever we face any issue while setting up campaigns. Further, we are able to track performance on different levels, monitor spend and also build custom reports and share amazing previews for creatives; along with the auto-optimization option for creative and constant recommendations to have a healthy and successful campaign. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I might dislike about Smartly is missing some features that can even facilitate the process for the campaign creation or becoming more creative while creating ads. Moreover, having training on the updates happening on the platform is important in order to be able to be up to date and build more successful campaigns. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You can optimise campaigns so much quicker and view data and creative performance with ease.

I also love the creative overlay tools that make our dynamic ads a lot more eye-catching than any of our competition. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes there are still things that can only be done on Facebook Ads manager like pinning products in videos to the catalogue but smartly usually catches up pretty quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Smartly makes the template building process much faster than our in-house template process for Google & Facebook ads. Smartly also allows us to offer carousel ads, which is quite exciting as we could not do this before. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Unfortunately, Smartly does not offer the same customization abilities as our in-house system does. With our internal system, we create templates by directly editing code which allows for custom stylings such as superscripted cents, custom badges, and custom prices. For example, if the price is "Buy One Get One" and the retailer wants "Buy" and "Get" to be red, we can internally customize the code to accommodate that.

If I had to recommend something that would hugely help my team, it would be to implement responsive padding and/or inline editing.

Responsive Padding Example: Right now if I want to superscript the cents within a price, I would need to separate dollars and cents into two different text boxes. The problem here is if the price changes from $20.99 to $2.99, the cents text box does not read the dollar text box width, and a significant gap is left behind.

Inline Padding Example: Another option to fix the above scenario would be introducing inline styling, allowing certain elements within the same text box to be edited (or in the above example, superscripted). Perhaps a way of doing this would be to implement conditional formatting inside the same text box. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.