The world of marketing has changed, with digital marketing establishing dominance. Advertising on digital and social media has taken over, which changed the game altogether. Launching and managing multiple complex and high-profile advertising campaigns on digital and social media comes with many tasks. For your ad campaigns to engage the target audience and increase conversion, you'd need to be an expert at marketing, design, and technology.
If you don't feel like spending time and resources to become one, that is where paid marketing automation services such as Markopolo.ai and Smartly.io come in. They are two of the best marketing automation services out there. Smartly focuses primarily on social media advertising, whereas Markopolo does everything for you.
However, this comparison is not to say outright one is better than the other. Instead, it aims to provide you with the necessary contrast you need to figure out which one suits you the best.
What is Madgicx?
Smartly.io is an AI-powered ad platform that helps businesses create, launch, and optimize their ads across Facebook, Instagram, and Google. It offers a wide range of features, including ad creation, targeting, optimization, and reporting. Smartly.io is a great option for businesses of all sizes that want to improve the performance of their ad campaigns.
What is Markopolo?
In today's data and innovation-driven world, the key to marketing success lies in leveraging cutting-edge technologies. Meet Markopolo, a game-changing force founded by the dynamic visionaries, Rubaiyat Farhan & Tasfia Tasbin (Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2023). The Marketing OS powered by AI is reshaping the landscape for high-ticket agencies and businesses. With Markopolo AI's sophisticated ML models and a treasure trove of invaluable data, marketing efforts reach unprecedented levels of effectiveness.
Tailored to cater to the specific needs of agencies, B2Bs, and D2Cs, this AI-driven platform elevates audience reach and enables 24/7 campaign optimization. By minimizing human errors and allowing teams to concentrate on strategic initiatives, Markopolo AI empowers businesses to maintain a competitive edge in the market.
Embrace the endless possibilities of marketing automation with Markopolo, as it streamlines your entire marketing operation, saving you substantial time. Moreover, Markopolo offers a wide range of features at an affordable price point, making it accessible to businesses of various scales.
Feature-based Comparison
Cross-Channel Advertising: Smartly supports advertising on Meta, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok across all funnel stages and channels.
Markopolo in addition to Meta, TikTok, and Display Ads, supports Google Search and Shopping Ads, LinkedIn, and Amazon Ads.
Audience Targeting: Smartly.io offers a variety of audience targeting features, including Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, Detailed Targeting, Geo-targeting, and Placement Targeting.
Markopolo does it too. The uniqueness lies in the data used and the clustering algorithm used on that for segmentation and fine-tuning the best-performing target audience.
Markopolo also has its preset audiences, which it can generate based on every connected data point and of course MarkTag’s Data server-side tracking data).
Dynamic Creative: Here are some of the specific features that Smartly.io offers for dynamic creatives: Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO), Dynamic Language Optimization (DLO), and Dynamic Product Ads
Markopolo has creative switching in place with its auto-optimization algorithms. It can create multiple sets of experimentation with creativity and copies, ultimately getting the user the best possible ROAS.
Retargeting: Smartly.io's retargeting features allow you to show ads to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your brand on social media.
Markopolo also has to retarget feature in it. With MarkTag’s implementation, Markopolo can build a synchronous marketing stack where data flows in microseconds among the stack elements.
Also being a cross-platform server-side tracker, MarkTag instantaneously gets connected with Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and Google’s GTM. These enhance Markopolo’s ability to accurately track a visitor’s journey by 25-45%. Coupled with MarkTag’s ease of implementation, omits any possibility of data leakages/funnel leakages, summing up an additional 10-15% enhancement in retargeting ability.
Marketing Automation: Smartly.io's marketing automation features allow you to create automated workflows that can help you manage your marketing campaigns more effectively. This can include things like campaign automation and lead nurturing.
Markopolo has taken it to a whole new level with its customizable automation capabilities. Being able to manage every aspect of a campaign/ad group/ad, with a huge library of variables, is a huge plus point for an account manager who wants to optimize these 24/7. Also, Markopolo gives the ability to use offsite conversion/offsite data in its robotic automation feature. These include data generated from direct sales, marketplace sales, and affiliate-based sales.
Offsite conversion or offsite data is any data that has been generated outside of the platforms like Meta/Google/Linkedin. Why it’s important because of the sheer amount of volume data that can be generated from direct sales, marketplace sales, and affiliate-based sales.
Performance Reporting and Analytics: Smartly.io's Performance Reporting and Analytics features allow you to track the performance of your social media advertising campaigns in real time. This data can then be used to optimize your campaigns and improve your results.
Markopolo also provides detailed performance reporting and analysis. With MarkTag, Markopolo removes any potential attribution gap/data discrepancy. MarkTag syncs in microseconds with the platforms, and the ease of implementation results in almost zero data leakage. The impact can be seen in the Event Match Quality Score or EMQ Score of the users' marketing stack.
Markopolo comes with custom metrics feature, where the user can generate his custom cross-platform metric to be monitored.
Email Marketing: Smartly.io is mainly a social media advertising platform, so it doesn't have dedicated email marketing features.
Markopolo is not focusing on building an email marketing segment for its product roadmap. A user can avail of it in Markopolo through a simple Zapier integration.
Attribution Reporting: This feature enables businesses to understand the customer journey and the touchpoints that lead to conversions. It helps in identifying the channels and campaigns that are driving the most sales, allowing for more informed decision-making.
Smartly.io does not have its own pixel. Instead, it integrates with the Facebook Pixel, which is a tool that allows you to track the activity of people who visit your website. Smartly also integrates with other third-party pixels, such as the Google Analytics Pixel and the TikTok Pixel.
Markopolo’s MarkTag gives it a clear edge over Madgicx in terms of Attribution tracking. A more detailed analysis of the scene technology difference is described below.
Pixel-Based Tracking (Smartly) Pixel-based tracking, also known as client-side tracking, involves inserting a small snippet of code (or pixel) onto a webpage, usually within a specific advertisement or upon the page load. This pixel sends back data to the server when the page is loaded or when a user interacts with the ad.
Pros of Pixel-Based Tracking:
- Simple Implementation : Pixel-based tracking is relatively simple to implement. Once the pixel is embedded in the web page or ad, it will start collecting data automatically whenever the page is loaded or the ad is clicked.
- Real-Time Data : Because the pixel sends data back to the server every time it is activated, you get real-time information about user interactions.
Cons of Pixel-Based Tracking:
- User's Browser Dependency : Since pixel-based tracking relies on the user's browser to send data back, it is affected by browser settings and limitations. If a user's browser blocks third-party cookies, for instance, the tracking pixel may not work.
- Latency : Since the tracking process involves making a request to a server and then waiting for a response, it can introduce latency (or delay) to the page load time.
- Growing Privacy Concerns : The use of tracking pixels has raised privacy concerns, as they can be used to collect a great deal of information about a user's behavior online without their knowledge or consent.
Server-Side Tracking (Markopolo) Server-side tracking, on the other hand, involves capturing and processing user data at the server level. Instead of relying on the user's browser to send data back, this method involves the server directly receiving and processing data.
Pros of Server-Side Tracking:
- Less Affected by Browser Limitations : Since server-side tracking does not rely on the user's browser to send data back, it is less affected by browser settings and limitations. It can still capture data even if third-party cookies are blocked.
- Faster Load Times : Since the tracking process takes place on the server, it does not introduce additional latency to the page load time.
- More Robust Data Collection : Server-side tracking can capture a wider range of data than pixel-based tracking, as it is not limited to the data that can be captured by a pixel.
Cons of Server-Side Tracking:
- Complex Implementation : Implementing server-side tracking can be more complex than implementing pixel-based tracking. It requires a deeper understanding of server-side technologies and may require the collaboration of both developers and marketers. Markopolo solves this with their Implementation Helper Suite.
- Possible Data Inconsistencies : Since server-side tracking involves processing data on the server, it can lead to data inconsistencies if the server and the client (i.e., the user's browser) are not perfectly synced. This is solved with Markopolo's Instant Sync Technology.
- Delayed Data : Unlike pixel-based tracking, server-side tracking does not always provide real-time data. Depending on how the server is set up, there may be a delay between when an event occurs and when it is recorded. However, Markopolo fixes this, providing Data in <2 microseconds.
AI Optimization: Smartly.io uses AI to optimize your bidding strategy, creatives, and reporting to help you get more out of your ad spend.
When we launched Markopolo, it was built keeping in mind MSMEs who don’t have that much data in their marketing stacks.
These added a uniqueness itself, as all the algorithms that we have built till now are built keeping low data scenarios in mind, including our submitted provisional patent ‘Method of suggesting high performing audience interests and keywords for online advertising.’ (EFS ID: 44479531, Application Number: 63287822).
Businesses that suffer from unorganized siloed data in marketing stacks got to see major improvements with Markopolo from these algorithms.
Markopolo utilizes offsite conversion/offsite data in its optimization architecture. These include data generated from direct sales, marketplace sales, and affiliate-based sales.
While setting up cross-platform budget optimization, users can select these variables as the primary goal to be improved too.We trained the software to be efficient in a range of monthly advertising budget limits across platforms. Till now we trained it with 13 million campaign performance data points. CMOs/Marketing Managers can now let the software spread their whole monthly advertising budget across platforms. Markopolo can do it seamlessly based on cross-channel campaign performances.
Integration: Smartly integrates with Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce.
Markopolo integrates with Shopify, HubSpot, Amazon, and any Marketplace available currently globally. We have built a generalized proprietary architecture to get connected with these Marketplaces.
Pricing Comparison
There's only a certain percentage of your budget you can spend on marketing automation, and knowing the expenses along with the services received is very important. Knowing how much each of them is going to cost you, is a deciding factor between the two options. So, let's check out the pricing information for these two.
Pricing of Smartly
Smartly's pricing structure depends on the amount of money you spend on ads.
Depending on your ad spend, you may be charged from 1000 euros to 5% of what you choose to spend on advertising.
Check out Smartly's pricing page for more detailed information.
It's evident that SMEs and lean startups can hardly justify this kind of expense. As they tend to work with smaller budgets, maintaining a minimum monthly spend and a platform fee would be difficult.
Pricing of Markopolo
For its wide range of features, Markopolo charges a very fair price.
We have 2 types of pricing plans for you depending on your organizational needs: Self-Serve & Enterprise.
Under Self-Serve, we have-
- Starter: $47/month
- Growth: $152/month
And under Enterprise, we have-
- Starter: $999/month
- Growth: $1999/month
- Evolution: $2999/month
The Verdict
It's premature to declare one platform better over another, as they provide a wide range of services over different price ranges. The budget, strategy, goals, and requirements of your particular business will dictate which one's the right fit for you.
Hopefully, this article assists you in the decision-making process by providing much-needed contrast.
Markopolo vs Madgicx- another adition to our comparison series! Check it out to see if our tool can hold it's own!
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