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AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

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Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#21

Post by aberman »

zackola wrote: post #20
antongm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#22

Post by antongm »

zackola wrote: post #20
antongm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

True, but as (sometimes) thinking members of the startup community, we blog about things only tangentially connected to our product, but that we think the startup scene as a whole might find of interest.

The amount of press we got on those posts was completely unexpected (cf. my follow-up post about our imploding blog server). A happy bonus maybe, but we'd rather people love us (or hate us) based on the product.

Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#23

Post by hristov »

antongm wrote: post #18
hristov wrote: post #16

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!".

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.

Sigh, I was just joking, obviously. I guess my sense of humor is kind of .... orthogonal to yours.

Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#24

Post by 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.

Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#25

Post by antongm »

earl wrote: post #24

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.

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.

Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#26

Post by fookyong »

hristov wrote: post #16

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!".

that sounds like a marketing plan to me (rather than a business plan).

and as marketing plans go for unknown products, it's not bad.

Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#27

Post by barmstrong »

antongm wrote: post #9
barmstrong wrote: post #7

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…

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/a…

Great - signed up for the beta. Let me know when you're ready to test it out. Btw, I'm an employee at another YC company so if you need to get in touch can always do it through my profile here (which links to my blog).

Re: AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords

#29

Post by zackola »

aberman wrote: post #21
zackola wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

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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