

AdGrok (YC S10) Raises $470K To Be The TurboTax For Search Engine Marketing - antongm
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/07/adgrok-raises-470k-to-be-the-turbotax-for-search-engine-marketing/

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il
Congrats on raising money, AdGrok is a great product that solves a very real
problem for businesses looking to advertise online: they really don't have the
time or desire to learn how to do it right. The campaign improvement
suggestions are especially useful, because scaling and optimizing campaigns is
so hard. Campaign improvement recommendations are something Google frequently
tries and fails at. I'm beginning to think their failure to give good
suggestions is intentional, because they're optimizing for getting you to
spend as much money as possible without giving up completely. That's why
having third party tools in the space are so critical.

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jemka
_I'm beginning to think their failure to give good suggestions is intentional_

I call it conflict of interest consulting. It happens in many industries and
people (customers being "consulted") are most times oblivious to the conflict.

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jswinghammer
How does TurboTax come into play here? I don't see the analogy really.

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antongm
The analogy here is that TurboTax takes a complicated thing (the 1040) and
makes it into a very simple, intuitive process (basically, a managed clickflow
that takes you from start to finish). The analogy is also in the market
itself: most people don't need an accountant or fancy accounting software,
TurboTax does what they need it to do.

Well, nowadays, marketing is almost as central a function as accounting to
many small business. There's no 'TurboTax' out there to help get them online.
The marketing space is still full of confusing and clunky tools that the
average person can't really use. AdGrok hopes to remedy that by creating a
similar tool.

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riffer
That makes sense, but why don't you just say that you make "[your cateogry]
simple" instead of saying "we are the [successful, unrelated product] for
[your category]"? The benefit being that you won't have to write two
paragraphs to explain it to people.

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qq66
Even worse, when I think Turbotax for search engine marketing, the analogy led
me to believe that it's an accounting program for SEM or something that lets
me prepare a report on my SEM spend.

Argyris - it's Amal from Trinity College. Glad to see you shooting for the
moon here in SF :)

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ceelee
AdGrok is an awesome service, we just started using it and have been happy
with the results. We've found it very useful for getting AdWords campaigns off
the ground quickly.

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bravura
The last time I checked, AdGrok had no API. Are they planning on changing this
any time soon?

It would be useful to many sites if AdGrok made it dead simple for _other web
applications_ to help you advertise online.

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mceachen
We've had some interesting chats with third-party developers already, and
we'll have an API to drive Grok-o-matic within the month. If you have other
ideas, hit us up on chat through our website! I'd be more than happy to talk
with you.

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forwardslash
Just curious, do you have any plans to expand into adCenter as well?

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antongm
Yes!

That's next on the queue. Stay tuned.

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Alex3917
So let's say I had some dollars to spend on SEM, how is this better than
Trada? I've never used either, but without learning anything more I feel like
I'd lean more toward their approach as it currently stands.

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antongm
I'll let Trada's product speak for itself.

One basic difference is that from the advertiser's perspective, Trada is an
agency in which you've essentially outsourced your marketing. However, AdGrok
is a tool you can use to manage your own campaign. It can serve either as your
stand-alone SEM tool, or as a complement to your existing SEM workflow.

Either way, you get an unparalleled view into what's going on inside your
campaign and why.

We also have a managed service offering called GrokMe, in which we set up and
manage your campaign for you. That's more in the agency vein, and from the
user's perspective, similar to Trada's offering. Again though, even GrokMe
users get our GrokBar and can see what's going on at all times.

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Alex3917
That makes sense. I definitely look forward to playing with it at some point.

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gallerytungsten
Good work, Argyris, Matt, & co.

