AppNexus vs. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AppNexus
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
AppNexus AppNexus offers online auction infrastructure and technology for data management, optimization, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated advertising campaigns. It integrates with advertising sources including Google's DoubleClick, Microsoft's AdECN, and aggregators.[3]N/A
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a recently (2015) expanded marketing platform for reaching audiences through the popular Linkedin work-oriented social network that includes modules like the Lead Accelerator (supporting segmentation features to improve conversion), Sponsored Updates, LinkedIn Onsite Display, LinkedIn Network Display, and Sponsored InMail. While still at its core a social marketing engine, Linkedin Marketing Solutions now presents a more comprehensive B2B advertising platform. The…N/A
Pricing
AppNexusLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AppNexusLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AppNexusLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Considered Both Products
AppNexus
Chose AppNexus
Appnexus is less retargeting-focused than Criteo. Their solutions are more focused on building awareness and not so much on the bottom of the funnel and on conversions. Regarding Mopub, their focus is on mobile, and Appnexus, even though it has a very strong mobile set of …
Chose AppNexus
The TTD platform seems to have better CTV/OLV inventory, so that is typically preferred over AppNexus (APN). Usually, if clients have an internal desk, they will use TTD, which can often lead to us bidding against them, which is also another benefit of running campaigns within …
Chose AppNexus
We use AppNexus as a part of a full advertising stack which includes the other platforms listed below. AppNexus is similar in it's offering and also offers unique header bidding options which help it stand out slightly against the other options in the demand side platform …
Chose AppNexus
AppNexus is a different kind of DSP. They put a lot of focus on taking care of their ecosystem, they are very restrictive in which kind of ads you can serve there. They audit all of the creatives, and that's why they never have issues with fraud and are good for branding …
Chose AppNexus
AppNexus has more advanced targeting options as well as better publishers than The Trade Desk. Even if the system is harder to use and less intuitive they have a lot of CTV inventory and are at the forefront of the industry. They should expand on other markets to improve their …
Chose AppNexus
Qlikview's dashboard is hard to configure. Also, it is unable to report on metrics by section or DMA. It does not update data that have been corrected. There is no visualization with Qlikview.
Chose AppNexus
Appnexus reporting was significantly more granular than Rubicon. It's reporting also was better organized and felt more trustworthy when pulling historical data.
Chose AppNexus
Before using AppNexus we have used Ad Juggler and compared to Ad Juggler, AppNexus is sophisticated ad server and the UI is awesome.
Chose AppNexus
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Chose AppNexus
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Chose AppNexus
Appnexus is the only one that i have used but I don't see why I would use anything else. It fits all of my needs, has extra things that I never got a chance to use and I look forward to learning and playing more with the data tools. I also like knowing that our user data is …
Chose AppNexus
Adobe Photoshop,Basecamp,DoubleClick,GoToMeeting,McAfee,Synthesio,WebEx Meetings
Chose AppNexus
AppNexus stacks up very well and works to mend across similar products, and to our proprietary technologies. They've created a platform that's close to a one-stop shop that spawns across a number of technologies and services, which is great from an advertising or publishing …
Chose AppNexus
Google Marketing Platform is the platform we used prior to AppNexus, while Google Marketing works innately with so many other platforms and does a wonderful job of streamlining everything we thought the vast features that AppNexus brings to the table would assist us better. …
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
I use Twitter ads when I want to expand the reach of something I am promoting, but will use LinkedIn Marketing Solutions as part of a targeted funnel and user journey for my audience later in the conversion cycle.
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is better suited for our B2B use cases while Meta is used and runs better for B2C use cases.

Targeting by job role, company size, geography yields better results for our marketing use cases and campaigns. If you are considering promoting for B2B go …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Both platforms have great options for specific targeting which is a key determining factor for me when deciding where to advertising and how to best get in front of our desired audience. However, LinkedIn is expensive whereas Facebook is more cost effective. LinkedIn is great …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
There is no cost to create a business account and get access to the Campaign Manager platform, so from a price perspective, this is a competitive advantage for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions compared to other platforms like Bombora or Terminus, which have technology licenses …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn ads CPC is typically higher than Facebook ads and can be higher than Google Ads depending on who you are targeting. I've found IT and CEOs to be the most expensive targets on LinkedIn.
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Google Ads and Facebook are too general, while LinkedIn Marketing Solutions lets us target specific profiles. With the other two you're never sure if the people that are going to see your ads are the appropriate ones, since they have no way fo knowing where they work or what …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn offered a different way to market and that was through direct messaging on the platform. Those direct messages result in a push notification and an email (depending on the user's settings), so we knew that was a more creative and attention-getting spend. It made more …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Audience type (professional) - LinkedIn has worked great for SaaS offerings while other social media advertising platforms seem better suited for product offers.

Lead volume - other platforms tend to produce more form submissions
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
When trying to reach professionals while maintaining a self-serve ad set up process and minimizing costs, LinkedIn can't be beat. We consistently see lower CPMs and CPAs for LI ads compared to going to independent professional sites for native advertising. Also, when driving …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn is definitely more expensive if you are doing video or image ad formats, unless you're in an extremely competitive industry for search ads on Google. However, Google has nowhere near the capabilities for audience targeting if you are selling business-to-business. They …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Facebook for Business revolves a lot around building build brand awareness, but we have not had much luck with conversions. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions seems more aligned with our goals of growing our customer lists. Furthermore, Facebook for Business's platform for marketers …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn made it easier because it allows peer to peer connection, which means that you will always have someone new to contact, someone new to reach and someone new to offer your product or service. In our case, which is recruitment, it is far different from Google that …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is the best option for B2B audience. The other platforms are not as beneficial considering that LinkedIn is made specially for business profiles. I would go with LinkedIn if I want to target B2B clients.
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions offers more powerful targeting capabilities than other ad platforms in the space. We are able to target by company, job title, job level, company size etc. which you cannot do accurately on competitor ad platforms like Facebook or Google Ads. Some …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
We chose to use LinkedIn Marketing Solutions as an additional channel to Google Ads (formerly AdWords). Comparatively, Google Ads gives you better reporting features and much lower PPC costs. The tradeoff is user segmentation -- Google lets you pick by general demographics, …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
I think LinkedIn, though a niche product, is not quite as good as Google or Facebook Ad platforms. LinkedIn feels more like Twitter ads platform circa 2012, with the lower view count. However, LinkedIn Ads has a great amount of targeting options that are useful when attempting …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
I rank Linkedin Marketing Solutions below Facebook For Business, as well as Google Adwords and Analytics. You get a much deeper view of how your ads are performing and your ROI with those platforms as opposed to LinkedIn. I'd probably rank Linkedin right next to Reddit Ads in …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
If you want more precision in B2B targeting, then LinkedIn is without question the better alternative. However, as I established before, I've rarely seen LinkedIn campaigns be successful for anything other than brand awareness/thought leadership. And that's almost 100% what …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Compared to other marketing solutions, LinkedIn provides a customizable platform that is useful whether you are trying to get your message out to a smaller audience or more large-scale. This platform is essential for any business or organization that truly wants to take their …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
While both Facebook & Twitter marketing platforms have a much lower CPL, the targeting criteria makes it difficult for B2B companies (as people don't generally put professional information on these platforms). We generated very few leads on these platforms, and do not devote …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions provides targeted users that are ripe for B2B business; however, the cost to reach those users is more expensive the other social platforms. However, for awareness marketing and lead generation - LinkedIn Marketing Solutions offers great ways to …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn marketing solutions can do a lot of what other advertising and demand generation platforms do. The most similar is twitter ad, but they serve a completely different purpose. We selected LinkedIn marketing Solutions because the LinkedIn Platform attracts a specific type …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn is phenomenal in comparison in terms of the data and analytics they provide to you. No other platform tells you the names of the companies of users who clicked on your ads or visited your website, or anything like that. Website analytics provided by LinkedIn are …
Chose LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Compared to other solutions, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions are more extensive in terms of offerings.
Managers have a variety of options to start their online promotions. Each solution comes with a well-build platform, in-depth knowledge of how to use that platform and a team of …
Features
AppNexusLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Ad Network Integration
Comparison of Ad Network Integration features of Product A and Product B
AppNexus
8.5
Ratings
14% above category average
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
Ratings
Data Transfer8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
DSP integration9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
AppNexus
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
Ratings
Ad campaign creation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad deployment9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Display advertising7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Sequence targeting8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AppNexus
8.2
Ratings
6% above category average
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
-
Ratings
Ad dashboards9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad performance reports7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Cross-channel ad management9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AppNexusLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Small Businesses
Google Ad Manager
Google Ad Manager
Score 8.5 out of 10
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 9.0 out of 10
WordStream
WordStream
Score 6.9 out of 10
Enterprises
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Score 9.0 out of 10
Sprinklr Marketing
Sprinklr Marketing
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AppNexusLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
4.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
5.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Online Training
2.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
4.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AppNexusLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Likelihood to Recommend
AppNexus is well suited to use for programmatic campaigns that we have to launch for clients. Everything from standard display, native, high-impact, and video can run within the platform. Our trading team is well experienced within AppNexus (APN), and it's typically the first DSP they learn when starting.
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LinkedIn has a much higher CPC than most commonly used platforms resulting in a much higher CPL/CPA. For businesses that don't have big CPC budgets, it would be difficult to be able to run tests without breaking the bank. Unless they get it right out of the gate, they may not find success with their efforts. On the opposite side of that, if a business can afford higher acquisition costs, this platform is likely worth exploring. They offer precise targeting with audiences full of professionals so often the leads are really high quality if you get it right.
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Pros
  • As per my experience they have strong support personnel. Solving the issues as and when required.
  • We can solve certain issues like campaign performance, inventory optimization and more with the help of AppNexus wiki. We get all the required information in the Wiki itself.
  • They have given the right platform to both buyers and sellers to workout and meet their digital marketing needs and goals.
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  • Targets the exact right audience for your B2B messaging: you don't have to guess based on likes or any other periphery data to determine whether you're reaching the right audience - you can hit by job title, years of experience, job function, seniority, and other great ways to ensure precision delivery to the correct audience.
  • Offers a helpful variety of ad units that are great for different types of campaigns to make sure you're reaching your audience in the right format for the ask.
  • Self-service platform now for all ad units, enabling you to take control of your LInkedIn marketing with a hands-on approach.
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Cons
  • Better visualization and dashboard will make it a perfect product.
  • The product concept is hard to master. More video training in addition to the interactive training may help.
  • More report templates will make my life easier since it takes time to build one.
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  • LinkedIn has a relatively limited audience size when compared to other social media platforms.
  • There is a large group of LinkedIn users that create an account and never return, but messages still hit their inboxes.
  • LinkedIn targeting by job title can be limiting, as they set a hard limit on targeted titles per campaign.
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Likelihood to Renew
I love almost everything about AppNexus because I feel like the user data is easy to track because of the identifiers, you can see which adverts got clicked and which were ignored. We can track the location of the ad on the page fold and this makes it so much easier for future campaigns. The only thing I don't like is that the data is only kept for a year, and I'd like it for a longer period of time
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Because I think the interface is kind of confusing at the beginning and it confuses you a lot.
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in terms of promoted content reporting and usability, the platform is not as flexible or easy to use compared to more established social platforms like Facebook. However, it does offer plug-ins to Google Data Studio which makes pulling and manipulating data easier. My main usability gripe comes when looking at organic performance of a company page. There isn't an easy way to export organic performance data.
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Reliability and Availability
I've never had any problems with appnexus - the software is always available
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Yes, everything works great in that sense
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Because the support team does give you support, they take 24hrs to get back to you but once they open a ticket they focus on resolving the issue for you. My only problem is that you don't have a specific account representative assigned to you.
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So, everything what I just said previously adds up to the value of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Definitely recommending it to a friend. It has its things to improve but its nothing major or nothing to worry about. So I give a 9 because it still has that, some user interface glitches that can be improved but do not damage the experience that you have with it.
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Online Training
Online training are not user friendly and not easy to understand
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Appnexus is less retargeting-focused than Criteo. Their solutions are more focused on building awareness and not so much on the bottom of the funnel and on conversions. Regarding MoPub, their focus is on mobile, and Appnexus, even though it has a very strong mobile set of solutions, is specialized on CTV and other media channels.
Read full review
LinkedIn offered a different way to market and that was through direct messaging on the platform. Those direct messages result in a push notification and an email (depending on the user's settings), so we knew that was a more creative and attention-getting spend. It made more sense for our professional clientele as well.
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Scalability
Because it's a great DSP but not the best
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • After using AppNexus for our banner ads, which used to be a simple task became a complex one and we lost time building it out.
  • After realizing there is no dedicated way to contact AppNexus for troubleshooting and exchanging many emails going into long threads we lost even more time.
  • Our return on investment was poor with AppNexus due to the vastness of the platform and poor support experience limiting what we could do and losing time.
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  • As an agency, LinkedIn gives us one more way to demonstrate worth: we're managing the LinkedIn page of many of our clients, and this is demonstratively an improvement from before.
  • Also as an agency, LinkedIn ads allow us to offer an additional way to get leads in the door. When we've struck out on other ad programs, we usually try LinkedIn Ads before moving on to a higher investment channel (such as list rental).
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ScreenShots