Basis DSP vs. Skai

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Basis DSP
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Basis from Basis Global Technologies (formerly Centro) is a programmatic ad buying platform supporting digital advertising buying and placement across varying channels. Since the acquisition of SiteScout the platform also contains technology from the SiteScout AdServer.N/A
Skai
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Skai (formerly Kenshoo) is a cross-channel advertising solution for search marketing, social media and online advertising. The product aims to give advertisers and agencies the control and automation needed to make better investment decisions across search marketing and online advertising.
$10,000
Starting Price
Pricing
Basis DSPSkai
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Kenshoo
$10,000
Starting Price
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Basis DSPSkai
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Basis DSPSkai
Considered Both Products
Basis DSP
Chose Basis DSP
Advangelist, StackAdapt, Simplifi, Trade Desk, Media Math - overall most of the other platforms we reviewed were perfectly fine and can get the job done quite well. We have mostly stuck with basis because of the relationship that we have, the fact that they have continued to …
Chose Basis DSP
Basis [DSP] has much better fraud control than SmartyAds DSP. Even though they do not have the amount of supply inventory as Smarty, they have much more controls for invalid traffic and bots which is very important to minimize discrepancies and issues with clients.
Compared to …
Chose Basis DSP
Compared to these 3 alternatives, Basis DSP is the easiest to use. Applovin is more complex but it is very messy and the learning curve is pretty steep. Applovin is focused mostly on big clients and not suitable for agencies of any size. OpenX would be the closest competitor …
Chose Basis DSP
Basis is able to reach ad exchanges that these platforms can not. Basis serves as a one-stop shop whereas these platforms require 3rd party integrations.
Chose Basis DSP
We've previously tested Pocketmath and evaluated Beeswax.

Pocketmath and Basis are roughly the same in terms of cost and inventory. However, Pocketmath's interface, while very attractive, is very difficult to use to deploy large scale campaigns quickly. It is definitely …
Chose Basis DSP
The primary reason for an agency or an SMB to use Basis is cost -- unlike other platforms which are full service or enterprise platforms with aggressively high minimums, Basis is well suited for proofs of concept and smaller campaigns. It can scale up, but the entry-level …
Chose Basis DSP
Basis DSP is much more user-friendly than DoubleClick and allows us to host our ads within their platform, rather than having to use DCM and DBM. Although DBM has more third party targeting options, the overall user experience of Basis DSP is far superior to DoubleClick.
Chose Basis DSP
SiteScout has much more control over our ads than other comparable platforms offer. We spend a bit of time configuring everything, but we're able to perform many A/B tests and really optimize our campaigns to a very detailed level.
Skai
Chose Skai
I think Skai beats the competitors with its advanced bidding management system, this is a unique feature of them that if you implement properly, your accounts will surely benefit from this, especially if you have tons of data that the algo can learn from and optimize …
Chose Skai
I personally like Kenshoo better than Marin for a few reasons. When it comes to Ecomm Search, Kenshoo is far better in terms of available features, algorithmic bidding which is more focused on ROAS, and reporting especially for eCommerce. Marin is a good platform, especially …
Chose Skai
Google marketing suite - Good for Google but nothing else
Marin - Was very problematic and lacked easy of use & features
Chose Skai
We selected Kenshoo in 2017 due to its market presence and its notoriety. We learned about Kenshoo's integrations with internal data warehouses, and the bid management aspects were touted as first class. In practice, our unique marketing needs did not align with the limitations …
Chose Skai
Kenshoo's integration with sales and social platforms as well as search made it the only choice when it came to managing campaigns. Other interfaces may be simpler and quicker but Kenshoo's range of external integrations makes it more flexible for certain campaigns and the …
Chose Skai
I definitely prefer Marin for paid search only accounts. I select Kenshoo when my client also purchases Google shopping media, since their proprietary tools there are best in class.
Chose Skai
Some features of Kenshoo outshine other solutions we've evaluated. Kenshoo Infinity Suite is a great product for multi-channel management but overall is less favorable especially from a pricing perspective. We've transitioned several client accounts from Kenshoo to DoubleClick …
Chose Skai
An advantage that Nanigans has over Kenshoo is that their version of 'portfolios' didn't have any budget or flight length requirements and was extremely easy to use. They also offered 'affinity' segments. These are studies they would run on certain audiences that would result …
Chose Skai
Kenshoo is the best in class. With "time" being the most precious resource we have, Kenshoo allows us to get more done in the same amount of time as comparable products.
Chose Skai
I have not explored other platforms.
Chose Skai
While DoubleClick does not fully budget pace accounts I think it overall provides more accurate changes than Kenshoo. When our company selected Kenshoo we were told it would be able to manage hundreds of small accounts with small budgets. It is more designed for accounts that …
Chose Skai
Kenshoo Search offers keyword bid policies based off of sophisticated algorithms rather than simple bid rules. Also, the Kenshoo Desktop Editor allows for extremely easy bulk optimizations. Marin Software doesn't have bid algorithms or an easy-to-use desktop tool. These are …
Chose Skai
Very different tool that Hootsuite - which is a good tool for monitoring, but not for ad management. Kenshoo social was easily implemented since we use Kenshoo Search for paid program. When comparing tools, this one seemed to be the most robust and solved many issues we had - …
Chose Skai
Kenshoo is a more effective and user friendly platform than most competitors. Their tool is more expensive and like I said before, tailored to larger marketing budgets. They set them self apart with the ease of use, the Kenshoo editor, and cross channel functionality. However, …
Features
Basis DSPSkai
Ad Network Integration
Comparison of Ad Network Integration features of Product A and Product B
Basis DSP
-
Ratings
Skai
7.1
Ratings
4% below category average
Data Transfer00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
DSP integration00 Ratings5.70 Ratings
Ad Campaigns
Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Product A and Product B
Basis DSP
-
Ratings
Skai
6.1
Ratings
24% below category average
Ad campaign creation00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Ad deployment00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Display advertising00 Ratings4.30 Ratings
Ad display and retargeting segmentation00 Ratings4.80 Ratings
Sequence targeting00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Ad Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Basis DSP
-
Ratings
Skai
7.3
Ratings
6% below category average
Ad dashboards00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Ad performance reports00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Ad conversion tracking00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Ad attribution reporting00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Cross-channel ad management00 Ratings5.90 Ratings
Ad forecasting and optimization00 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Basis DSPSkai
Small Businesses
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 9.0 out of 10
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Basis DSPSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
3.6
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Basis DSPSkai
Likelihood to Recommend
Basis DSP is well suited to every type of campaign imaginable. My firm specializes in outreach and education campaigns and we use Basis DSP in order to turn people out to events and to take specific actions. Basis has changed how we do business for the better. The hyperlocal campaigns, native campaigns, and audio campaigns have all added excellent additional capabilities to our tool box and have allowed us to complete very compelling campaigns for our clients.
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Kenshoo Search may not be appropriate if you don't spend much on search engine marketing. It also may not be appropriate if you don't care about tracking conversions and are only concerned with increasing awareness. Or, if you care about tracking conversions but don't expect to capture many, Kenshoo Search may not be necessary.
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Pros
  • Customer Service and Support is fantastic. Always willing to educate our team and help us get the most value out of the platform.
  • The ad fraud features are great. Through DV360 we need to use a third-party which comes with additional costs.
  • Easy to use platform.
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  • Customized reporting. There are many features that users can't report out on in power editor. Kenshoo makes it incredibly easy to get everything you need for a raw data dump.
  • Automation. Whether it's automated rules, portfolios or refreshing CRM uploads, Kenshoo helps cut some of the manual tasks out of the process making me more efficient.
  • Staying up to date with Facebook product updates. I can appreciate that Kenshoo does an exceptional job and ensuring new capabilities in Facebook are ready for use in the Kenshoo platform as well.
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Cons
  • Managed service is a little pricey and tends to have slightly lower performance
  • interface is very 90's, could use a real facelift purely from an aesthetic perspective
  • Reports are continually being updated but could use some refinement in output for client-facing reports
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  • Syncing - I have had many issues where syncs would time out, or not show that changes were posted to Facebook.
  • Library - if there was a library for targeting settings that could be saved and easily accessed and input into new campaigns, that would be very helpful.
  • Updates - seemingly basic tools that a social management platform should have often taken a long time to be released.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
It's great to have a product like Kenshoo Social. It has a lot of data and is a great tool to use. Honestly, I think we would have looked somewhere else if we didn't have some much data and time invested into the platform. We had used it across search and social, so we invested a lot of time to get it running smoothly. It is very expensive and we think we could have gone elsewhere to get the same results over time. Once they have your data and the system is running smoothly, it's very difficult to go elsewhere
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Usability
It's pretty basic, nothing is hidden and nothing ever moves so you can count on finding what you are looking for each day
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Set-up like other marketing platforms. If you know Google Ads, you know Kenshoo
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Support Rating
We have a dedicated account rep. She makes it seem like we are her only client, she is very responsive, helps each time we have a question and understands our campaign goals. Anytime we need support, our rep is available either email or call and if she is not going to be available, she will let us know ahead of time to provide back up and inform them of our current campaigns so they can better assist us.
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Very responsive and bring fast answers for problems
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Implementation Rating
There are a ton of tactics and strategy to implement in the DSP platform. There isn't really a selection of the different types of campaigns or tactics to choose from, you just have to learn as you go. Once you figure out the strategy and goal of the campaign it is very easy to implement the tactic and to achieve its goals.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Basis [DSP] has much better fraud control than SmartyAds DSP. Even though they do not have the amount of supply inventory as Smarty, they have much more controls for invalid traffic and bots which is very important to minimize discrepancies and issues with clients. Compared to other DSPs though, it lags on performance solutions.
Read full review
While DoubleClick does not fully budget pace accounts I think it overall provides more accurate changes than Kenshoo. When our company selected Kenshoo we were told it would be able to manage hundreds of small accounts with small budgets. It is more designed for accounts that would be spending minimally thousands of dollars a month. We had extreme issues with Kenshoo budget pacing and increasing our bids. Overall it did not meet our needs, and we will be switching vendors at end of contract
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Return on Investment
  • Basis DSP allows us to reach users in many different places while controlling costs - access to major exchanges at a competitive bid rate allows us to provide a lot of added-value to clients without dramatically increasing the cost they incur.
  • The team is friendly, helpful, and responsive, so we don't have a lot of situations where we're locked in campaign downtime due to a customer service issue with negative downstream impacts to the bottom line.
  • Periodic reporting outages have resulted in campaigns that overpace and incur needless costs (however, this is certainly an exception, not the rule).
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  • ROI is harder to track due to reporting/column & time frame default tech in my humble opinion but generally better results when compared to other products
  • Since the interface is difficult to navigate and paid search is a reactive medium, can produce barriers to change.
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ScreenShots