Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

About Clickable, Inc. | About The Search Market | Clickable Products | Working With Clickable | Clickable Innovation & Growth | Other

About Clickable, Inc.

• What is Clickable?Clickable is an online solution to make creating and managing search advertising simple, instant and profitable. Clickable is designed specifically to address the needs of small and midsize search advertising spenders.

• When was Clickable founded and by whom? Clickable was founded in 2006 by serial entrepreneurs Munish Gandhi and David S. Kidder. Prior to founding Clickable, David founded SmartRay Network, a mobile advertising delivery pioneer.

• Clickable is a new company, so who are its backers?Clickable is backed by some of the Internet's most successful venture-capital firms and private investors. Clickable completed in December 2007 its Series A round of investment, led by Pequot Ventures and Union Square Ventures, totaling $6 million. This round included investments from strategic individual investors Peter Thiel, Managing Partner of The Founders Fund and Co-founder of PayPal, and Jonathan F. Miller, former America Online Chairman and Chief Executive. Clickable's Series B round of investment, led by Founders Fund, was completed in July 2008 and raised an additional $14.5 million, bringing the total investment in Clickable to $22.5 million.

• Who sits on Clickable's Board Of Directors? Clickable's board of directors includes: David S. Kidder, Clickable; Munish Gandhi, Clickable; Rick Heitzmann, FirstMark Capital; Albert Wenger, Union Square Ventures; Jonathan Miller, Former CEO/Chairman of AOL; Justin Fishner Wolfson, Founders Fund.
  

• Where is Clickable's headquartered and how many employees are there? Clickable is headquartered in New York, with offices in Virginia, Seattle and India. There are more than 60 employees.

• Who are the people behind Clickable? The Clickable team is comprised of some of the most accomplished professionals in the fields of interactive, advertising, search, statistics, data mining, computer engineering and product development. View our management bios here.

• Who are Clickable's industry advisors? Clickable's Board of Advisors includes: Gil Beyda, Founder, Tacoda; Mollie Spillman, CEO, TidalTV (Former CMO, Advertising.com); Dana Todd, Founder, EVP, Sitelabs, President of SEMPO; Gregg Stuart (former CEO of IAB); Scott Wilder, General Manager of Community, Intuit.

• Who are Clickable's customers and how many are there? Clickable's growing customer base includes (as of June 2008) several hundred small and midsize search advertisers, including a variety of agencies managing search for their small and midsize clients. Direct advertisers represent such industries as e-tailing, media, education, healthcare and local businesses.

About The Search Market 

• What is search advertising and why does it matter? According to Wikipedia, Internet search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on Web pages. Search advertisements can be placed on Web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content. Search advertisements are targeted to match key search terms (called keywords) entered on search engines. This targeting ability has contributed to the attractiveness of search advertising for ad buyers, since consumers often use a search engine to identify and compare purchasing options immediately before making a purchase decision. According to Piper Jaffray, global search ad spending is expected to grow to $44.5 billion by 2011.

• What market opportunity is Clickable addressing? The past decade introduced revolutionary innovation in online advertising, but the paradox is the immense complexity that came with it - especially in search. Complexity manifests in to too many unique interfaces, overwhelming analytics and inconsistent performance tracking systems - all contributing to counterproductive friction. These challenges are daunting for small and midsize marketers, who tend to be busy, multifaceted business people. This SMB segment spends less than $50,000/month on search advertising and comprises half of all search-ad spend. 

Many advertisers would like to outsource to an agency, but shrinking agency margins are making smaller advertisers unprofitable to serve, and raising the required minimum spend. Moreover, the existing tools out there are designed for larger enterprises and require expensive and timely configuration. In fact, only 27% of search advertisers use outside SEM agencies, according to Marketing Sherpa, while only 26% use paid-search technology, according to Jupiter Research. The answer to this market opportunity lies in a new wave of Web services, and that's where Clickable comes in.

• Doesn't Google's AdWords already address the search advertising needs of small-and-midsize businesses (SMBs)? Google AdWords continues to be successful in addressing the SMB market. In fact, the SMB marketplace helped build the Google economy and now comprises half of it! Clickable does not replace Google, but is an overlay to make the entire advertising experience simple, instant and profitable. Clickable is educating and reinforcing Google's base of smaller customers. As a Google API partner, we're providing the first Apple-like experience and recommendations to deliver even greater efficiency and performance. And while Google is the dominant ad network, it's not the only one. Clickable consolidates online advertising across all the major search and pay-per-click ad networks so marketers can realize additional opportunities with greater ease. We think of ourselves as "Analytics 2.0," where value shifts radically from complex dashboards and "featuritis" to simple, high-return recommendations -  actionable and delivered in real time.

Clickable Products 

• What are Clickable's products and what benefits do they provide? Clickable Pro for advertisers is an online solution that makes search advertising simple, instant and profitable. Clickable provides an intuitive experience for marketers to view and manage performance across all major ad networks. Clickable's instant login, powerful analytics, actionable recommendations and world-class support help marketers achieve transformational productivity and profitability. For the marketer, Clickable is like having a trusted advisor always by your side to ensure success.

Clickable Agency, as its name suggests, is designed for advertising agencies. It delivers unprecedented productivity gains to multiply the number of clients managed per person while delivering higher margins through predictable, performance-based technology costs. Clickable enables agencies to capture new revenue streams from smaller clients who otherwise would not be profitable to serve under traditional agency cost structures. Agencies can then groom those smaller clients into full-service accounts. Finally, Clickable can rapidly enable and educate agency staff with Clickable's embedded contextual and multimedia training.

For advertisers and agencies seeking professional support, Clickable Assist delivers just the right mix of premium assistance to ensure search-marketing success. Whether your requirement is launch training, ongoing advice or full-service management, Clickable Assist offers tiers of assistance to meet your business goals.

• What is the signup and integration process like? Clickable has introduced the first login-and-go experience to simply and effectively manage search advertising across multiple ad networks. Compared to search management tools at the enterprise-side of the market, Clickable enables small and midsize businesses to create an account and instantly integrate Google and other ad-network accounts. Upon completion of setup, Clickable immediately starts delivering recommendations so you can improve performance and efficiency.

• What ad networks does Clickable work with? Clickable supports all the major search-engine ad networks, including Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. Clickable is negotiating partnerships with multiple other premium pay-per-click and performance-based ad networks. One of the benefits of Clickable is its Open Advertising API, which enables virtually any network to quickly become Clickable enabled in order to gain access to marketers seeking additional advertising opportunities.

• Does Clickable track conversions? Clickable's Act Engine can leverage individual search network tracking codes, but we also offer Clickable Conversion Tracking, which lets marketers easily measure conversions across all major advertising networks – including Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter – with a simple, independent conversion tracking script. Rather than installing different scripts for each search network (each with their own data limitations), you only need to install one script, and Clickable will collect the same information from multiple networks. If you have eCommerce transactions on your Web site, you can even track dynamic conversion values.
  
  By implementing Clickable Conversion Tracking, you will also get access to our "Set Goal Values" wizard, which allows you to set a specific, numeric goal value – either a "Cost Per Acquisition" (CPA) or a "Return on Ad Spend" (ROAS) – that Clickable's Act Engine will use to produce precise actions and alerts customized to your business goals.

• What kind of reporting does Clickable enable? Clickable's "Analyze" tab offers simple but powerful reporting into campaign performance. It provides an instant view into key sales-funnel metrics, trends, best and worst performers and comparisons. Clickable's reporting tools enable you to view top-level metrics at the ad-network account level, as well as drill down into campaigns, ad groups and individual keywords. You can customize your date range and intervals, and export reports as .csv files.

• Is Clickable compatible with my existing advertising tools? Clickable is an overlay to consolidate multiple, disparate ad-network dashboards into one simple experience with greater effectiveness. That enables Clickable customers to easily leverage other tools into their total online marketing workflow.

Working With Clickable

• What kind of training and help does Clickable offer? If you're familiar with Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing or Microsoft AdCenter, learning Clickable is easy. Its intuitive interface, step-by-step wizards and embedded contextual help eliminate the need for in-depth training or specialized technical administration. Clickable has revolutionized the search-advertising experience to proactively deliver recommendations aligned with customer-defined business goals. In addition, Clickable is backed up with world-class customer support and product experts. You can reach them live via the in-product chat or toll-free number. Finally, customers soon will benefit from the Clickable Community and University, which will include resources like product and SEM tutorials, case studies, product updates and forums. 
• How does Clickable charge for the product and what are the terms? Clickable charges $129 per month if monthly ad spend is under $2,500 and 5% of monthly spend for ad spend of $2,500 or more. This is a small tradeoff compared to the efficiency, performance and simplicity you'll gain. Agency rates are determined by total managed spend and seat licenses; Email Sales for a quote.
• Are there any risks to using Clickable? No. Clickable is an overlay across your advertising networks to bring you simple and consolidated experience with greater profitability. You can go back into your ad-networks' legacy dashboards at any time, and you can leave Clickable at anytime. Your data are protected using the highest Internet-security protocols, and we take your investment and satisfaction very seriously. We hope you'll stay with us after realizing a better search experience. We also hope you'll grow with Clickable and make it even better throughout our rapid development schedule. (Did you know we release a new version of the product almost every four weeks?)
• Who are your competitors and how are you different? There are companies who've introduced successful search-ad management systems at the high-end enterprise side of the market. However, Clickable is unique in bringing a simple, consolidated experience with recommendations to the small-and-midsize business sector. Importantly, Clickable is "login and go" - new customers can expect to be up and running in minutes. No heavy configuration. No special training. Just simplicity, "instant on" and greater profitability the minute you sign in.

Clickable Innovation & Growth

• What is Clickable's commitment to innovation? Clickable has simplicity, speed and innovation in its DNA. Our goal is to transform search advertising for small-and-midsize advertisers by doing one thing well: making search simple, instant and profitable. To do this in a marketplace as dynamic as search, you have to innovate constantly and move fast. That's why Clickable has invested in the world's single largest innovation and product lab dedicated to solving its core mission. That's why we're always listening and collaborating with our customers to inject learning directly back into our product. That's why we release an updated version of the Clickable every four weeks. Clickable is firmly committed to innovation because our customers' success depends on it.

• What is Clickable's international presence and what languages does it support? Clickable currently supports the English language and U.S. ad-network accounts. (Some Clickable customers manage their accounts from outside the U.S.) Clickable is exploring International expansion.

• Will Clickable expand into additional ad networks, including PPC, display, rich media and social? Clickable's focus is making search and pay-per-click (or "PPC") advertising simple and effective. However, we acknowledge that search advertising sometimes plays a big, complementary role with other forms of advertising. We are exploring how Clickable can best benefit advertisers with very narrow search as well as broader online advertising goals.

Other

• How do I contact Clickable? If you're an existing customer or interested in becoming one, email support@clickable.com or call (877) 775-6699. Job candidates should email jobs@clickable.com. For anything else, email info@clickable.com. 

• I'm interested in working at Clickable. Who should I call? Email jobs@clickable.com and include a cover letter describing yourself and how we should work together.

• I'm a customer or fan of Clickable and I'll be in the New York area in the future. Can I meet you? Absolutely. Email info@clickable.com and let us know when you'll be in the area. We love meeting customers and the other members of our community.