Question about programmatic ad platforms - Google or The Trade Desk?

I was super skeptical about programmatic for small budgets under $5k. Switched to The Trade Desk for a local campaign in Austin last month and saw a 3x ROAS compared to Google Ads. Has anyone else noticed better targeting with one over the other for local markets?

3 comments

3 Comments

wesley3857d ago

That comment about "super skeptical" really hit home because I felt the exact same way last year. I ran a small campaign for a restaurant in Denver, maybe $3k, and Google Ads was eating up the budget without much to show for it. Switched to The Trade Desk for that same market and saw similar results to what you're describing - the ROAS jumped significantly. The big difference I noticed was in how the targeting works locally. Google Ads tends to just show your ad to anyone within a radius, but The Trade Desk seems to use more data points like local browsing habits and even foot traffic patterns. It made a real difference for my client's lunch specials. For small budgets like ours, every dollar counts, so I'd stick with Trade Desk for local campaigns unless you need something really simple.

the_simon3d ago

Not sure I totally agree about Trade Desk being better for small local campaigns. I've run similar tests with both platforms and honestly the targeting stuff you're describing is already baked into Google Ads if you dig into the location settings and layer on audience segments. For a 3k budget, the extra complexity of Trade Desk might not be worth the hassle when Google can get you 90% of the same results simpler.

alice_hart7d ago

3k is a pretty small test budget for any platform. I'm with Trade Desk on some bigger campaigns for commercial clients and it works, but for a 3k local restaurant campaign I bet you would have seen similar results just by tightening up your Google Ads setup. Google lets you layer in location data like foot traffic patterns too, it's just buried in the settings. Most people don't dig that deep on a small budget because they're in a rush. Trade Desk's strength is scale and data, not necessarily being better for a single restaurant spending 3k.