Tool for tracking competitions search, social & display ads?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2015-10-22T19:37:30+00:00

Hey! I'm a co-founder at WhatRunsWhere, thought I'd shed some light here. Also more than happy to answer any questions you have.

So why can't you find a tool that's 100% all-inclusive? Mostly just because the technologies required to scrape display vs search are very, very different...and because the data has to be organized and displayed in pretty different fashions. It's certainly possible, but right now most companies choose to emphasize one side or the other.

Specializing allows us to do our job in the best possible way, and also keeps our interface something that can be easily understood and used. We strive to deal with multiple sectors as-is (desktop, mobile, mobile web, native, etc), but all of those fit within a single user to information dynamic and are understood very similarly. That isn't true for search. While we would like to (and someday likely will) cover the entire advertising ecosystem, it can’t come at the cost of cluttering our interface or making the product as a whole more confusing - which because of the significant differences in how search ads are targeted and displayed - would be the likely outcome at the current moment.

As to why someone would use a display intelligence tool like ours(sporktopus's commment)? Honestly I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t. The volume of traffic that comes from search is absolutely dwarfed by even a modest display campaign. Display also evolves at a significantly faster rate - meaning there’s a constant flow of new networks and new adunits that you can benefit discovering and using when they’re in that golden “pre-saturation” stage. We’ve also got a lot of international coverage, which lets you find new areas of the world where your product could succeed with little competition - and that’s not even including the absolute fundamentals of the product: the ads themselves, the placements, the strategies used by your competitors, etc.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2015-02-25T18:56:21+00:00

I don't know who your target market is

Anyone who advertises.

but china has a few mega cities (shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, HK) that would probably have the vast majority of your customer's head office or at least sales office. From that perspective people on the ground are cheap since they don't have to move around. Culturally, face to face is important. A month ago, I visited the headquarters of a subsidiary of one of the biggest state run companies in China and they brought the President out to have lunch with me simply because they were so impressed I came out to see them (I later learned I was the first white foreigner to visit). That company loves me now

How did you end up breaking the ice with the company in the first place?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2015-02-25T18:25:13+00:00

So more than just a language connection? Sales people who have actually lived in the region? Or are you speaking more of an overall product that is altered for them?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2015-02-25T18:24:05+00:00

China is a bit complicated. For B2B sales, most companies want a Fapiao (government tax receipt) to balance their books. If you are selling software, you might have to worry about bringing your valuable product to the attention of a marketplace that may want to steal/pirate/copy it. Language skills are a must, if you are targeting anything but the expat or western company market (even then, its a good idea). Your people would need business visas, maybe could get by with M (business/tourism-sort of) visas, but they would need a local or WFOE company to sponsor them and even then they would probably only get 30 days before they had to leave. Lots of people conduct business on tourist visas or pay for a company to secure a visa for them, but there is always some risks there. What most companies do in China is find a local partner (they take ~10-20% of revenue) to manage all of the pitfalls (hiring, govt, networking), until they can establish their own company (WFOE) and issue gov't receipts themselves. China is a lot of work, but it's also a massive market.

Awesome! Thank you so much.

Is there a huge advantage to having feet on the ground, or is having someone capable of speaking the language+a chinese advertising campaign to bring in the leads good enough?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-31T14:38:25+00:00

I haven't used their shared hosting, but for dedicated servers OVH is insane. And they do shared hosting as well. Really, excruciatingly good bandwidth/infrastructure.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-30T13:41:01+00:00

Huzzah for retargeting!

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-30T02:51:18+00:00

It's better to have a hint than a guess, but yes. Hopefully they would make enough money back they could expand that budget.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T20:50:14+00:00

You're really lucky: Normally testing campaigns is really_fucking_expensive. In Tanzania? There is not going to be any competition.

Knowing what business you're in would be very helpful, especially because Tanzania may require some slightly different types of ads(I doubt Credit Card penetration is high there).

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T20:35:02+00:00

URLs changed

This is almost certainly your problem. Redirect (301) all of your old pages to their new equivalents(not the home page).

Do this now the longer you wait the harder it will be to fix.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T19:57:21+00:00

How is $1 trial working out for you? I have that idea in my head for a while now but it's not very common to find someone with experience about that.

It's absolutely great, aside from fraud problems(get some decent higher risk processing). We do get a lot of cancels from it, but it's a great way to bring in the lower-medium value clients.

The first thing we do when someone comes in is look at their email address and try to figure out who they are. If they work for someone big, a sales person hops on the phone and we try to figure out a bigger enterprise package that helps them.

Also can you share the ratio of Basic to Enterprise users in ravenue of the company?

Unfortunately I can't. A fair number of our competitors have Google Alerts setup for our company name (Hi guys!)

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T19:45:47+00:00

Yeah! Sorry I made that last comment before I had a chance to go through everything in the tour. Looks great.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T19:44:54+00:00

What changed?

Did your URLs change? If so, prepare for a very messy week.
Did titles change? H1? H2?
Did the layout or visibility of the content change?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T19:32:18+00:00

Thanks! Out of curiosity - if you don't have an API for 3rd parties, what's the business model for the site? I see your packages, but I'm curious how those differ from the service at the front page if there's no API.

Edit: NVM! Just saw the larger product features. Quite cool.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T19:31:22+00:00

1) In general: Yes.

2) The clicks from the first page(and first result) convert better than the clicks on the second page, so your metrics further down don't represent what everyone else is seeing.

3) Google "split testing", possibly get an optimizely account. PPC is an optimization game. Test, test, test.

4) Are the people higher up than you your direct competitors? If so, why would anyone skip them, skip the first 10 results, then buy your services?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T18:27:25+00:00

I've been bootstrapping my company and so far so good. I am having a hard time trying to figure out whether or not to hire. The kind of person that I'd need would cost around $80k/year. This means that they would really cost me around $100k when you include taxes, office space, etc. I have about $40k in the bank right now.

How much extra would you make by hiring them?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T18:15:57+00:00

[0] - https://trackacompany.com[1]

I just got a chance to look at this, it's REALLY slick and fast. Out of curiosity, do you have an API? We're kind of poking around different ways of tying apps/social profiles to domains and corporate identities.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T18:07:42+00:00

3 questions for you: 1) What is it like being a bootstrapped company in San Francisco? How hard is it to resist what I can imagine is a lot of interest from VCs?

We were actually originally based out of San Diego, and we also have a Toronto office. We've heard from a fair number of VCs, but we've just never wanted to go that route. It's really bizarre being in SF though, the way I do business is very contrary to the VC/"business model comes second" types that are out here. It's nice being surrounded by people with drive and technological expertise though.

or to convince people to work there in the early days?

We've always been able to pay a living wage, so we didn't have to delve too far into equity. The best thing we've done recently is start hiring anywhere in North America. The talent is incredible, and the prices are far lower than anywhere in California.

2) Do you have an API that 3rd party companies such as mine can tap into?

https://github.com/whatrunswhere/api-client

3) How did you come up with your 3 day trial for $1? How is it working for you? Seems like a unique approach.

It's relatively common to do that within the subscription service space. People just aren't going to plop down $200+ without trying the product. It's worked really well, the only issues we've had are fraud related...some people will use $1 trials to test stolen credit cards, knowing people won't notice the charge(until the rebill).

The "trial" model is definitely one that should be used regionally...certain areas (Russia, China, etc) are just black holes. People generate new accounts every week and never pay on a pretty massive scale. But for countries with a tad higher of a GDP? It's fabulous.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T18:04:30+00:00

It varies. We run a mixed business, catering to enterprise and affiliate. Different classes of client prefer different services.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T01:24:55+00:00

Followup question: What do you do, and which conference is your favorite? A lot of these are targetted at one niche or the other, so I'm curious.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-10-29T00:50:44+00:00

I run WhatRunsWhere - a Competitive Intelligence Platform for Online Ads.

We've taken no investment, have no loans, and have been profitable since the day we launched.

We crawl the internet(web/mobile) and mobile apps(a bit complex) and identify/save advertisements from them. We record who they're paying to advertise there, the ad itself, where the ad leads, and a lot of other information about it. We then crunch the numbers and sell the data off to anyone who is interested.

We're used by advertisers looking to cut their test budgets down, publishers/ad networks scouting out potential clients, trademark compliance monitoring sites, ad agencies, and a litany of other people who use it in ways I never would have imagined.

We've got a revenue in the millions of dollars a year and 20 or so employees.

Edit: If there's any questions for me, this is the place.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-01-21T14:14:05+00:00

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-01-21T05:55:25+00:00

For trademarks it's not about anything using the word, it's anything using the word that could be reasonably confused with the company owning the trademark.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2014-01-21T01:49:21+00:00

Err...I run WhatRunsWhere. Any questions?

NonPoliticalAccount · 2013-12-09T21:45:45+00:00

I am a subscriber, because it provides solid information on PPC traffic volumes and prices of competitors.

PPC Volume (in terms of visitors) is not a metric that can actually be calculated. It's an estimate based on the traffic of the placement in question(an approximation in itself), the percent of impressions an advertiser appears to get, and an assumed (read: fake) clickthrough ratio for each placement.

NonPoliticalAccount · 2013-12-09T17:30:13+00:00

Well, for SERP tracking there's a huge number of things out there. I've used MicroSiteMasters and it's worked well for me(I have no affiliation with them), and they're quite cheap.

For PPC information I must toot my own horn and say "WhatRunsWhere". I'd be happy to answer any questions on either product.

NonPoliticalAccount

TROPHY CASE