As we mention in Chapter 10, there are many tools available to manage your paid search campaigns. For most businesses, the best tools are provided by the search engines themselves–each search engine has its own free bid management tool that is available through your paid search account.
While it’s great that these tools from the search engines are free, they are not right for everyone. Large paid search campaigns typically benefit from advanced features, such as multi-channel integration (the ability to include performance data from banner ad and social media ad campaigns). But even smaller campaigns benefit from the time savings stemming from using one central tool to update your campaigns in every search engine, rather than logging in to a different free tool to adjust your campaign in each search engine.
Here is a list of the best paid bid management tools from vendors outside of the search engines themselves:
| Platform | Search Engines | Intraday Bidding | PLA Support | Attribution Models | Multichannel Data Integration | Pricing |
| Adobe Media Optimizer | BA, BI, GO, YA, YAJ, YAN | Y | Bing, Google | Y | Y | License $$$ |
| Acquisio | BA, BI, GO, YA, YAJ, YAN | Y | N/A | N | Y | License $$$ |
| DoubleClick Search | AOL, BA, BI, GO, YA, YAJ | Y | Y | Y | % Media 1% – 2.5% | |
| ESV Digital | BI, GO, YA | Y | Bing, Google | Y | Y | License $$$ |
| IgnitionOne | AOL, BA, BI, GO, YA, YAN | Y | Y | Y | License $$ | |
| InsideVault | BI, GO, YA | Y | Bing, Google | Y | Y | License $$$ |
| Kenshoo | AOL, BA, BI,GO, YA, YAJ, YAN | Y | Y | Y | % Media 2.5%-10% | |
| Marin Software | GO, BA, BI, YA, YAJ | Y | Bing, Google | Y | Y | % Media 2%-5% |
| SearchForce | BI, GO, YA, YAJ | Y | Y | Y | % Media 2.25%-3% |
Supported Search Engine Key
AOL – America Online
BA – Baidu
BI – Bing
GO – Google
YA – Yahoo!
YAJ – Yahoo! Japan
YAN – Yandex