

AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords - mceachen
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/09/adgrok-simplifies-keyword-bidding-and-more-on-google-adwords/

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hristov
So this is basically their business plan:

1\. Write an angry blog post insulting New York, New Yorkers, and ibanks.

2\. Ride the popularity wave as a heated discussion rages about whether New
York is the greatest place on earth or an over-priced, roach infested pit of
assholes and prima donnas.

3\. Get on Techchrunch.

4\. Profit.

As an ex New Yorker, the only thing I can say is "Why didn't I think of this
myself!".

~~~
antongm
The business plan is more along the lines of:

1\. Recognize an under-served market segment with huge potential.

2\. Build a product which fills that segment's need

3\. Profit.

Our views on the East Coast tech scene are completely orthogonal to those
goals.

~~~
zackola
In that case it's a bit odd you posted that on the adgrok blog.

~~~
aberman
what's the matter with you?

I ask that seriously. Obviously their goal is to build a great product, and to
get people to use it.

They posted that article on the AdGrok blog because it drove a shit-ton of
traffic and it received a ton of inbound links. Why wouldn't they capitalize
on that?

As far as the product is concerned, it's fantastic. I've been using it in
private beta for a few weeks. I would bet on these guys in a heartbeat.

Startups drive traffic and signups any way that they can, and their company
name was hitting mainstream media before they even launched.

~~~
zackola
Flamebait isn't a great marketing plan. When someone says adgrok now I think,
"hm that's the guy who wrote the rant that New York's tech scene sucks", not
"that's the company who built a great product that will be super useful to me
and maybe even help me make money". Sure, my perception can be changed -
Antonio seems like a decent guy, but why start with a negative perception of
the company based on a largely personal rant?

Maybe antonio can give us some signup stats to go with the wave of traffic?
I'd certainly be curious about the effect it had, even if it was very general
(up 4000%, etc.)

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thorax
I was going to comment that their name may not be great for non-techies to
"grok" what the URL means to type it correctly. Hence it might hurt their
adoption rates with mom-and-pop web stores (since I was about to recommend it
to one).

But then I noticed they also purchased adgrock.com, too. Good planning there.

~~~
antongm
Thanks for noticing.

We also got adgork.com.

Ha!

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euroclydon
_One of the key features of AdGrok that makes it contextual is the GrokBar, a
plugin that sits on a website, and pops up anytime the user is on a page that
is being advertised on Google. Users will see a full breakdown of impressions,
clicks, costs, and conversion. If a keyword isn’t performing well for a given
page, the software will suggest alternate buys._

That's confusing to me. Who is the user? I'll assume they mean AdGrok users.
What websites does it give info for? I'll assume just the ones the user owns,
not their competitors who also use AdGrok, right? If so, why does it "sit on a
webpage", and "pops up anytime the user is on a page that is being
advertised?" Doesn't make any sense to me. [Edit] Isn't this just the
functionality you'd expect in the AdGrok interface? [/Edit]

~~~
antongm
It's a firefox plugin that's inside your browser and pops up when you browse
to the website you're advertising on AdWords.

You can see a video demo here:

<http://adgrok.com/features#grokbar>

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barmstrong
Great idea - I'm running a decent sized campaign for UniversityTutor.com and
have found the Adwords tools a bit lacking in terms of generating targeted
keywords for the thousands of pages and keywords I have. I ended up having to
write some massive scripts by hand and using the Adwords desktop tool to
import all the data (maybe 20,000 pages with several ad variations each, and
targeting different keywords). The whole process took days and was complicated
to the point where it wasn't easy for me to test variations.

The devil is in the details on a tool like this, but it could certainly be
useful (and a quick flip to Google) if executed correctly. Wish you guys the
best and would love to be an early beta user.

~~~
antongm
Your experience is pretty typical, except you had the hacker skills to hack
around AdWords' crappy UI. Most AdWords users do not, hence AdGrok.

The devil is most certainly in the details in a product like this, which is
why we welcome any and all feedback from beta users. You've got first dibs on
our product pipeline, so any feature you need we can push out very quickly.

Sign up here: <https://adgrok.wufoo.com/forms/adgrok-beta/>

Cheers, Antonio.

~~~
marcamillion
Hey Antonio, What will the pricing structure be like?

I would hate to sign up for something, get used to it and really like it, and
get hit with some absurdly high price.

Perhaps putting the cost upfront might prove to be useful.

Besides, your biggest competitor - clickable.com - buries their price two or
three menus deep, which smacks of sleaze.

Please don't follow their lead. Looks like there is a lot of promise here.

~~~
badgergravling
I'm following the call for a clear pricing structure - I manage a lot of
Adword accounts as part of my day job, and I'd be keen to look at anything
that makes it simpler and easier. But only if it's also cost-effective...

~~~
antongm
Totally fair questions.

We're taking a somewhat Radiohead position on it.

What would you be wiling to pay for it?

I'll tell you our thoughts on it so far:

A tiered pricing structure, with a fixed monthly subscription fee. Probably
starting somewhere around $20 for the smallest budgets, and going up from
there. We'll set the tier price points wherever there seems to be obvious
market segmentation.

Really big power users, or agencies who are white-labeling our product, might
get a more industry-standard percent-of-spend deal.

Our view is that Mom-and-Pops might be wary of a percent-of-spend pricing
model. That said, the small SEM shops of dubious quality, who are our real
competition, commonly use a percent-of-spend pricing model. So we might have
to go with that just to make it comparable. Even if that were true, we'd
charge nowhere near the 15-20% of spend many SEM shops charge.

So, worry not. You're not going to get used to our product, and then get
screwed by us on price. We'll leave the first-dose-is-free business model to
the enterprising young gentlemen around the 16th Street BART station in the
Mission.

Regards, Antonio.

Btw, feel free to hit me directly with any customer/pricing ideas at
antonio@adgrok.com.

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thegeezer3
Lesson learned - have an opinion and be controversial

Ive often wondered how I would feel if I wrote a post that p __*d the hell out
of a lot of people. Looking at the marketing result I'd say I'd be smug happy
as hell.

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paolomaffei
Hmm. Signed up for the private beta. Let's see...

Memo: if i'll ever be in this situation give HN users a pass to skip my web
app private beta queue since they're likely to be more useful than random
people

~~~
antongm
Paolo,

We're putting you at the head of the line.

Granted, HN users probably are the best beta users.

You should expect a beta invite today, or tomorrow at the latest.

Regards, Antonio.

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Revisor
Concentrating the long-tail keyword ads will increase competition => increase
bids => increase Google's and decrease advertisers' margins.

In the medium run this will only benefit Google.

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earl
How is this different from the self managed approach taken by eg clickable, or
the more full service places like Yodle / ReachLocal / Efficient Frontier /
CityVoice / et al?

Edit -- after watching their video, their in-browser funnel visualization is
cool as hell. Probably not scalable to larger merchants, but amazing for small
sites. Props -- that's a great idea.

~~~
antongm
Thanks, Earl, for checking out the video. Check back soon...the current tool
is really the MVP we wanted to get out the door. The GUI has all sorts of UI
prettiness on the way, including arbitrary page aggregation, time-series plots
for all that data, and even more visibility into how keywords/ads are doing.

To answer your question: from a business POV, it's no different than Clickable
(EfficientFrontier and Co. are way out of most SMBs' price range). We think
our approach is a lot better: by putting the tool in the browser, we make
campaign management painless. We also have more automation that Clickable, so,
through time, the GrokBar becomes a sort of marketing autopilot.

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Ardit20
Why only product pages?

~~~
antongm
Good question.

You can use the tool to drive traffic to any page, doesn't have to be a
product page. In keeping with our bottoms-up approach (as opposed to the top-
down, Google-centric approach of every other SEM tool on the market), we
thought looking at individual product pages would be most useful for
e-commerce sites, which is why we focus our demo on that.

But again, there's no reason to limit use to there. In fact, in v2.0 (which
should ship in the coming days) you can tag arbitrary pages, and look at
aggregate stats for that tagged group (e.g., a category of products like
'women's shoes' or the like).

