The Best Advertising Technology (AdTech) Tools For eCommerce

What is Advertising Technology (AdTech)?

Advertising Technology (AdTech) is a range of tools or software designed to help make your online advertising efforts easier, and increase your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). Whether it helps you create ad images, discover the most clickable headlines, reformatting content for different platforms for different screen sizes/platform, or helps you better segment your audience with AI, this category is all about optimizing your online advertising efforts.

Why use Advertising Technology (AdTech) software?

Advertising Technology (AdTech) tools help to automate or eliminate tasks to make your ads more relevant, effective, and cost-efficient. This improves your marketing and helps you to discover actionable customer insights that can increase conversions, improve ROI, ROAS and other metrics across the board.

When should you invest in Advertising Technology (AdTech) software?

You should start looking at AdTech Tools only once you've found (or are very close to finding) success with your ad campaigns and you are looking to scale. Most of these tools are only helpful for medium to high ad spend brands. And all of these tools become significantly more valuable as you scale.

For example, advertisers spending less than $5k/month probably don't need any tools at all, maybe an image or video editing software and maybe a copywriting tool, if you feel the need. As you start to go over $10k/month in ad spend, certain tools start to become more valuable. And as you go over $50k/month in ad spend, you absolutely must have some of these tools at your disposal, as the improvements in process, ad variation, and simply Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) will instantly pay for themselves.

Who in your team is managing Advertising Technology (AdTech) software?

Whoever is managing your ads, or in some cases, your creatives. Sometimes this is an agency partner and you should be working with them to determine whether the brand or the agency is paying the fee. The general rule is: If it's only usable on your account, you pay; if it is usable across all client accounts, the agency pays.

What are the most important features to consider when buying Advertising Technology (AdTech) software?

Depending on the sub-category: Creative vs Segmentation

Creative - you're looking for tools that help you create the best ads possible. These are tools that will improve copywriting, write copy for you, create compelling photos and videos, etc. And you're looking for tools that can export to all sizes: square, 16x9, 9x16, etc.

Segmentation - You're looking for tools that enrich and segment users in real-time, often based on their browsing behavior or other preferences. Some tools enrich with 3rd party data (such as Experian), others simply take your existing store data and better apply it.