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We often receive questions of how Syntryx compares to a myriad of advertising, analytics, competitive intelligence and automation tools. In order of frequency of comparison, the most popular firms, products and suites are:
The most frequent Syntryx differentiators that may apply are that Syntryx is:
Pros: Hitwise offers strong PPC keyword list generation that is superior to the MakeMeTop-driven Trellian and freely available Spyfu services (and better than Syntryx). Hitwise’s PDF report capacity is top-notch for deliverables to executive management, a function Syntryx does not provide. Hitwise purchases samples of ISP data, and passes on the consumer surveillance to its clients. Visitor demographic information is available for well-trafficked sites, and a unique and very cool set of paid conversion reports help major brands track which products are selling for highly trafficked competitors. Cons: Market limitations mean purchasing an international license is cost-prohibitive. Additional seats are expensive, and the Hitwise pricing model is not ideal for multiple-office organizations or traveling executives. Despite a broad ISP sampling, data depth is limited for the missions required of affiliate recruiters and media buyers, and finding thousands of affiliates or media buy venues for even large firms is not possible. Data misrepresentation is somewhat of an issue for the long tail of trafficked sites, as well as for those industries afflicted by spyware, adware and malware traffic. No contact information for sites is available. Hitwise is also more expensive than most other solutions, and agency restrictions apply. Conclusion: Hitwise is best suited for demographic-driven enterprises relying mostly on pay-per-click tactics. Syntryx is better suited for agencies, extroverted business development managers, affiliate recruiters, non-search media buyers, SEO professionals, and web infrastructure organizations. Also, distributed companies and firms with competitive intelligence budgets of less than $25,000 will likely be happier with Syntryx. Pros: Nielsen’s consumer panel and bridges into offline media solutions are the keys to its offerings, and provide good ideas for behavioral marketers. Nielsen offers a series of analytics solutions as part of its suite, which can make the firm more of a one-stop shop than all others outlined here. Nielsen’s AdRelevance offers an indispensable and most thorough assessment of which ad media are most seen. The US is by far the most thorough Nielsen market, although the firm has branched from its Dutch parent throughout Europe and into the top AsiaPac markets. Nielsen has a long-standing history of servicing media buyers. Estimated advertising budgets provide exceptional benchmarks for high-level media planning. Cons: Fascinating consumer traits (especially in the US) are available through Nielsen’s service, although many of the most useful outputs in the US are available for free at Quantcast, or available at Hitwise and Comscore. Although Nielsen, Comscore, and Hitwise implement similar surveillance methods, the results are often very different among the services, leading some to unfairly question credibility. Similar to Syntryx, Nielsen does have a useful database of executive contacts, but contact information for most publisher sites is unavailable. Precisely targeting affiliate venues is not possible through Nielsen’s service. Conclusion: Nielsen is best suited to large firms that can make use of Nielsen’s complete solution suite and/or offline media intelligence services, and for those whose expert knowledge is tied to knowing the reach of particular pieces of ad media. Unfortunately, most of the benefits from Nielsen are not directly actionable, and though useful for the highest levels of planning, do not contribute to solving the pains of performance. For those firms actively pursuing affiliate recruiting, those in need of pure sets of available media buy venues, and those with large teams or many operating divisions, Syntryx will be of better service. Pros: Comscore sports the best US demographic profiling – especially for business and student audiences – and global demographics that are comparable or superior to all others. Comscore buys ISP data from AOL, and illustrates the US market in unsurpassed detail. The firm encourages agency usage, and behavioral and highly localized marketers have a lot to gain from the service. Cons: Some of the practical benefits of Comscore’s demographic services are now integrated into Google’s advertising platform, which is great for advertisers as a whole, but not as good for paying subscription customers. The publisher long tail is essentially omitted from Comscore’s scope, and contributions to PPC and bizdev-related traffic sourcing are nominal. Conclusion: Use Comscore for the best of US demographics, and smile while enjoying the benefits of the service through Google. Traffic stream monitoring is useful for high level views, but Comscore’s offerings leave the entire burden of acquisition on the shoulders of its users. If specifically identifying media or PPC channels is a requisite, Hitwise or Nielsen will provide better service, and if actionable identification and contact of many affiliates and media buy venues is required, then Syntryx is the right choice. Pros: Alexa is free, and despite sample size issues that specifically skew in favor of a webmaster audience, the audience and traffic measurements are generally valid yardsticks for most analyses. When proofing media venue potential, Alexa and its toolbar are the first acid test. Whois information is often available. Cons: Services like Alexa Booster can corrupt the service’s data. No search-related value propositions are addressed, nor does Alexa aid in affiliate or media buy identification. All together, this means that Alexa offers only insignificant insight into online advertising, market share, and most of the other true measures of monetary performance. Conclusion: Alexa’s API is thoroughly integrated, expanded, and better packaged within Syntryx, and leaves no reason to visit the Alexa site. A long series of proprietary Syntryx technologies Pros: Scrapers are generally inexpensive, and should be used by small businesses and guerrilla operations. When a community of users adopt scraping software, and the software communicates with a data warehouse, then meaningful results can be achieved (see Spyfu and Googspy). But this is rarely the case. Cons: Software download is usually required, and large quantities of personal processing power are often needed to produce meaningful results that compare to the always-on results provided by surveillance-based methodologies. The results are naturally limited to what search engines disclose, which is already much too little for operators within any large market. As affiliate and media buy intelligence is already rare and specifically limited by search engines, scraping doesn’t help – and most scraping solutions do not address campaign-related pains. Conclusion: You get what you pay for, and $10, $50, or $400 doesn’t go very far here. If you’re operating a small business with a tight budget in a small vertical, these tools are the right solution. But they’re not for serious and high-powered internet businesspeople. Pros: Compete is a free, fun and somewhat improved version of Alexa’s offerings, and like Alexa, is based mostly upon toolbar user surveillance and partly via limited ISP data acquisition. By estimating actual audience quantities, and especially by detailing visit times, the site often provides a more meaningful gauge of audience reach than Alexa. Compete is an excellent free resource that should be known and used by businesspeople unable to afford better education. Site comparison is useful, easy and intuitive. Cons: The data is subject to severe degradation in the long tail and for international venues, and is not useful for actionable applications. The toolbar is aimed at consumers, and although this means that audience measurements do not experience as heavy a bias as does Alexa, the toolbar itself is not nearly as useful to an internet businessperson. Conclusion: Seasonal trends and meaningful traffic estimates are available through Compete, but despite the site’s claims to compete with Hitwise, Comscore, and Nielsen, Compete’s offering is incomplete and rarely a substitute. The simplicity is to be appreciated, and one day the offerings may be broader and more useful. Compete is a very indirect competitor to Syntryx value propositions, and is not a substitute in any way. Pros: This one’s hot, free and funded – it’s the best free demographics portal online, which earns Quantcast the status of a one-click venue within Syntryx. It should be considered as an Alexa/Comscore hybrid 1/50th the size, but on steroids. That’s a good thing. The firm’s model of offering analytics to publishers means the ingredients for an ad marketplace may one day form. Cons: The data sample is truly small when compared to the operations of Hitwise, Comscore and Nielsen, and is hence only valid and useful when assessing large, US-based operations. The data acquisition costs are high, but hopefully Quantcast’s funding will expand its data acquisition arm. Conclusion: Quantcast is great for free demographics, and is a highly recommended one-click venue within Syntryx. However, if your organization requires detailed or international demographic information, then the premium services of Comscore, Hitwise or Nielsen must be used. Pros: These Velocityscape resources are fantastic and free search marketing sites that really put pressure on the PPC benefits of Hitwise, Comscore and Nielsen. When combined with Quantcast and Comscore’s bridge into Google’s advertising platform, the remaining value propositions for the surveillance firms quickly erode for all but the biggest brands and savviest marketing strategists. Cons: It’s not an automated PPC vehicle – yet. The technology is a scraping aggregation of critical mass that risks being shut down by search engine lawsuit. Conclusion: Use Spyfu for PPC keyword list generation. Its use is highly complementary to and not a substitute for Syntryx. Pros: The $10,000 and under price point for the T3 link reports is much less expensive than report generators like Hitwise, Comscore, Nielsen and Syntryx. Certainly, the quantity of results is far superior than that provided by search engines and scraping technologies. Cons: T3 Report does not include affiliate and media buy search capacities, contact information is limited, nor are demographic or search marketing value propositions available. The report ages and becomes outdated over time, and new reports must be purchased rather than being rendered at will. Conclusion: If what you need is a one-time report of all sites linking into a few competitors, this is the perfect solution. The lack of keyword capacity can be covered by free tools like Spyfu, while demographics can be covered by Quantcast. If time isn’t of value, then this is the best low budget pack money can buy. If large budgets are at stake, lots of dedicated human capital in need of productive labor, or market share acquisition a set target, then more expensive solutions are the right path. What is commonly called the “analytics” market should really be called “internal” or “introspective” analytics. These solutions are vital necessities for internal study, but provide little or no intelligence regarding the outside world. It’s the difference between a microscope and a telescope – analytics are micro-detail oriented, while the other competitive intelligence solutions listed here are generally macroscopic in their perspectives. An undeniably useful method that quickly becomes saturated, redundant, and less productive. It’s simple, and that’s good, but the sheer scope of large markets mean this is far from a complete solution. Inbound link trails, or “backlinks”, are a particularly useful offering of Google, Yahoo, MSN, Gigablast and Alexa, but the extremely limited and redundant results are rarely of much use to media buyers, affiliate recruiters, or ad agencies when compared to best-of-breed solutions.
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