The rise of the internet has changed every aspect of human life. It has connected the whole world with a single click. It provides immense storage of information. Apart from the information, it provides social media platforms where people spend most of their free time scrolling for new things. In short, the internet is not just one thing. It’s a compilation of things comprising of various communications networks that speak the same language – the digital language.
With the ever-increasing internet users, the digitalization process is transforming everything with it. In the process, it has invented new business platforms too. Where there are people, there is a business opportunity, and currently, it is the internet sector. Digital ads are the new ways of advertising the business. When it comes to the new services, there are service providers too.
To capture this ever-growing market, many companies started their journey. One prominent name in that list is Clever Ads, a company that offers a free advertising solution to grow the business. In an interview with Insights Success, Manuel Climent, the CEO of Clever Ads, sheds light on the inception of Clever Ads, its offerings, and the future of digital advertising. Below are the glimpses of the interview:
Please brief our audience about Clever Ads, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the data integration solutions niche.
Clever Ads offers a suite of free advertising solutions for SMBs, providing them a fighting chance to grow and compete against bigger players out there. With Clever Ads, companies can create, optimize, and manage their online advertising strategies all in one place and at no extra cost.
Clever Ads is now positioned as a leading player in the market thanks to its technology. Using Machine Learning and AI algorithms to automate the ad creation and automation processes, we keep the costs of our services lower than other competitors while also offering most of our features at no cost.
Our customers, who are largely SMBs and eCommerce businesses, have a growing need for marketing and advertising actions but can hardly afford to hire an agency or the human resources needed to set and manage the strategies manually.
Clever Ads has been a pioneer in using this cost structure and developing the technology needed to offer high-quality advertising services. As we put our extensive advertising knowledge into services that are backed by partnerships with Google, Facebook, and Microsoft right into customers’ hands.
Furthermore, by partnering and sharing our growth and expansion with the mentioned platforms as well as with other eCommerce-focused sites such as BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Shopify, we’ve acquired a deep understanding of their needs from the customer’s perspective. Another key differentiator factor is our brilliant, dynamic, and energetic team of highly qualified young experts.
What other products/solutions does Clever Ads offer, and how are these making an impact on the industry and your clients?
Clever Ads, as mentioned before, includes a series of free advertising products, including a campaign creator, ads audit, keyword planner, banner creator, ads manager mobile app, and many integrations with platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Sheets.
Another product line is Clever eCommerce, which focuses on specific adapted products for e-commerce businesses and also includes campaign creation, optimization, and management features.
When we started back in 2012, we were only focusing on Google Ads creation and optimization services powered by our Google Ads Creator product. Now, this product is just a small part of our ecosystem. As we constantly understand and interpret our customer’s needs, we’ve been very fast and agile when answering to those market needs with new products and features.
Our last bid, our Ads Management Mobile App, has been launched as a response to the huge and increasing demand for multi-platform mobile apps, which promises to be a big leg of our future. Clever Ads has now become a fully integrated advertising management platform. I envision Clever Ads as a must-have advertising platform for SMBs.
Being an experienced leader, share with us your opinion on what impact has the adoption of modern technologies such as AI and machine learning had on the data integration solutions niche and what more could be expected in the future?
It’s really interesting to see how the world evolves according to the rising technologies and how they transform day-to-day life, reality, and the environment we live in. We’ve gone from an offline planet to a completely online and digital planet. Technologies come, and we adapt, using them to build new things: from businesses to personal relationships.
The computing power technologies have now allowed us to automate many processes. Applied to our case, if you set a machine to learn about advertising campaigns optimization, at first, the results will be poor, but as it learns, results will get better and much faster than manual working.
At this moment, all physical stores are entering the virtual world with a fast-growing eCommerce sector. Not that many years ago, if you wanted to buy something, you’d go to a store. We’re normalizing now, thanks to the technology evolution, that we can go to platforms like Google or Amazon and purchase items there. This is now a natural motion still in adoption, and there’s a long way to go, but Clever Ads is doing its part for that development.
When a new technology arises, there’s always someone more advanced that tends to become the trendsetter and take the cake. Then over time, governments regulate it and divide it in order to prevent monopolies that normally stop innovation.
Companies such as Google, Facebook, or Amazon, will need to be divided as they don’t allow smaller players to enter the market, and everyday people don’t benefit from that monopoly. With this in mind, at Clever Ads, we’re moving fast to offer multi-platform services, adding value with a smart budget balancer. This way, we won’t depend on these platforms, and we can offer our clients a fair and non-skewed optimization when it comes to their advertising spending. This neutral position is the one we’ll work from for a fairer future.
Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive Clever Ads to sustain operations while ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?
At Clever Ads, we’ve followed the stipulated regulations and worked remotely during the pandemic. Previously, we had everything prepared and developed so all our employees could work remotely; we had done some test runs in the past. From an operative standpoint, it wasn’t a challenge for us to perform all our operations remotely. Also, our communication with stakeholders has always been carried out this way. The only part that was affected was our personal interaction with fellow team members. We are transitioning back into office life at the moment.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the data integration solutions market?
My advice would be to be very connected with the market and the environment and dedicate a lot of time to deeply knowing and understanding the niche and its needs. Also, it’s key to find a very specific niche to operate in; digital marketing has many disciplines, and you can easily lose focus. This was crucial for Clever and its success.
About the Leader
Manuel Climent, CEO of Clever Ads, has a physics background and worked for eight years as an engineer in a multinational company, specifically as a project manager. He then decided to become an entrepreneur associating himself with very leading-edge digital marketing experts and developers back in 2012 while working in strategy and management.
Together, they realized they could escalate and automate the advertising creation and optimization process, ‘pack’ it and sell it. From that time moving forward, Manuel has been very successful in gathering all the insight and input from the market, Google, Facebook, and other industry key players. Understanding how the market is going to evolve and plan accordingly is how Manuel directs strategies.
