Seeking a specialist brand protection and bidding alternative to Adthena?
Adthena has been one of the most recognisable paid search intelligence software providers for a number of years, attracting investment from Espresso Capital in 2022. They have a well-fleshed-out product that provides competitive insights, establishing them as a market leader in the enterprise segment. They have recently released Brand Protection and Brand Activator modules, which are directly comparable to Marcode. Whilst they check hourly for brand protection, Marcode checks each keyword 20 times per hour as standard across multiple locations to provide the most accurate data on the market for all of our products.
If you want to ensure you are taking action off the deepest possible ad insights, then the level of data Marcode provides is for you.
How do Marcode and Adthena's Brand Protection modules differ?
Adthena added their brand protection recently, whereas Marcode was purpose-built for this.
A specialist brand protection suite
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As mentioned, Marcode provides 20 checks per hour instead of the single check per hour Adthena does.
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Marcode also uses a proprietary system to determine the advertising account running the ads without having to click on them, whereas Adthena reports on ad click URLs. This means Marcode provides an aggregated view of every infringement a particular bad actor runs, such as affiliate hijacking, trademark infringement, or voucher code scams.
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Marcode pre-warns advertisers when bad actors run ads before inserting affiliate codes.
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Marcode provides direct integrations with affiliate networks.
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There are no known affiliate hijackers that Marcode's ad analysis system cannot decloak, no matter how sophisticated their hiding techniques are.
CAPTERRA REVIEW
"Very pleasant experience and the tool was tested simultaneously with the other top tools in the space but none were able to detect the complex cloaking like Marcode."
How does Adthena's Brand Activator compare to Micromanager?
On the surface Brand Activator and Micromanager perform very similar tasks, enabling savings on brand search spend by automating keyword activation based on competition.
Marcode is a deeper, more flexible alternative.
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According to Adthena's documentation, Brand Activator only evaluates data and changes keyword/ad targeting once per hour (meaning that ads may be stopped for up to an hour after competitors appear). Marcode evaluates data every 15 minutes by default (and up to every 5 minutes during the peak season) to ensure that ads run as quickly as possible after competitors are spotted.
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Marcode provides completely customisable rules at a keyword level. Ads are activated and deactivated based on competitors, competitor position, ad type, day, organic position, device, and more. Adthena defines its Lone Ranger terms based on no bidders and the brand appearing p1.
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Marcode checks across multiple locations, with these locations customisable to a postcode level.
CAPTERRA REVIEW
" The platform also provides a significant amount of information that is easy to understand"