Are there any SaaS apps that people recommend for managing online advertising?
The Google ads UI is overly complex for a typical small company, and that obfuscates what it really going on with your ads. In addition I would love to see a UI that automatically handled experimentation and A/B testing with display ads (by automatically generating the ad images based on set of possible captions and background images).
Google's platform has many auto management options. If you link your account with Google Analytics it gets really powerful. This is one of those areas you should either avoid completely or get a really good person putting 100% of their effort in to it. You can put it on auto pilot at some point, but that initial set up combined with landing page optimization on your side is critical and needs an exceptional effort. You are competing, in a psuedo-market, against the entire world for ad inventory.
Several years ago I spent a lot of money on one of the online ad management systems, but by the end of the 12 month contract there were more advanced features within Adwords than they had. There might be a good option out there now, but it is a moving target for that provider given constant change combined with pieces which aren't exposed by an API. (writing a custom scraper to automate data collection and tasks on a platform split testing their UI and features isn't very pretty either.)
Thanks for the suggestions. None of these are really what I had in mind - a tool that hides the complexities of campaign management and optimization. Where is the Zendesk of advertising?
I had a look at each of the websites. Wordstream is the only one that has any information on pricing. Adspert appears to be on target, but the pricing information just says "Adspert is affordable for every business". It looks like Adobe AdLens doesn't exist any more. A google search shows ads - but they just lead to a whitepaper signup.
Your adwords rep will hide the complexities if you like - be prepared to bleed money all over the place though - in many simple, complex and esoteric ways.
Most of those "no price listed" tools run somewhere between 5-15% of ad spend. Many times with high minimums. I see no reason to choose one from scratch.
Either learn adwords (really learn it, practice, test, do it right) or hire someone who knows what they're doing (and beware of all those who think they do but don't...)
Google is super optimized to get into your wallet so either play ball or stay the hell out of the path of the greatest money machine ever created as it rakes in cash all the way til it can't monopolize more.
The Google ads UI is overly complex for a typical small company, and that obfuscates what it really going on with your ads. In addition I would love to see a UI that automatically handled experimentation and A/B testing with display ads (by automatically generating the ad images based on set of possible captions and background images).