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Top 10 Google Ads Alternatives That You Should Try

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Article Note: This article “Top 10 Google Ads Alternatives That You Should Try” was first published on 13th August 2013. We have last updated this article on 8th July 2020 with fresh information.

Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is a dominant force in paid search advertising but in recent years, advertisers are starting to experience an increasingly challenging and expensive experience on the platform with a lot of fierce competition and a highly saturated audience. Advertisers may find it more beneficial to explore other ads platforms and by finding new avenues for ads and diversifying paid media spend they will be enabled to reach new engaged audiences and bring down costs; competition is not as fierce and cost per click often lower.

In this guide, we’ll show you the Top 10 Google Ads Alternatives you should try for your online advertising campaigns.

1. Adroll

Although AdRoll is highly popular as a retargeting platform, it also has other products offered apart from retargeting such as Video Ads and programmatic display prospecting and both can be served in and out-stream.

Users report a 5-fold return on their ad spend and the platform reaches audiences not only across the most popular social media sites but also on more than 500 exchanges and networks. You can sign up for Adroll on their website.

Visit Adroll

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Recommended for you: Applying Big Data to Advantage Your Social Media Advertising.

2. Amazon

Amazon has a wide range of ad products available. If you’re into eCommerce then Amazon can be a good choice. Amazon offers custom ads, video ads, sponsored products & brands as well as display ads to name a few. You can choose to sell directly to Amazon customers thru Seller Central or sell on Amazon, advertising through Vendor Central, who will then sell the products to customers.

By 2021, Amazon is forecasted to account for 50% or even more of the eCommerce market. Get started on Amazon Ads by going to their advertising page.

Visit Amazon Ads

3. Bing Ads

Bing Ads can be considered a direct alternative to Google Ads with its own set of tools such as its very own tool for keyword research. This ad platform is a great choice for affiliate marketing and affordable search advertising.

As recently as 2018, Bing has become the 3rd largest search engine with 4.58% of searches online done on the site.

Bing offers paid search advertising similar to Google Ads where the ads are also shown on the search results page. Plus, your marketing strategies can benefit from Bing’s lighter restrictions on advertisements and more affordable cost per clicks.

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Bing is also the power behind Yahoo’s search, incorporating it into its ad network. What this means is if you’re running ads with Bing, they’re also likely to appear on Yahoo search. Sign up for Bing Ads today.

Visit Bing Ads

4. Facebook Ads

Facebook is the largest social media network in the entire world right now. Digital marketers and advertisers have a plethora of very popular ad tools at their disposal on the platform to boost product engagement. Carousel, slideshow, video ads, and collections are just a few of the offerings. A giant in social media advertising, Facebook is constantly updating its algorithms, allowing for better audience targeting.

While it’s compatible with a lot of brands and markets, Facebook’s ads are mostly being used to target the millennial demographic with its familiarity and above-average use of the social media Titan. With its sheer volume of users that go up to the billions, you can find fresh new audiences and for literally every niche on the Facebook Ads platform whether you’re selling a service, a digital, or a physical product. Know more about Facebook ads by visiting their online guide.

Visit Facebook Ads

5. Instagram Ads

Instagram puts a premium on advertising lifestyle products as well as viral & social advertising and is swarming with millennials and social media influencers with over 500 million active users per month. Take your pick from ads that can be shown within the app as videos, stories, pictures, and many more.

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Founded in 2010, Instagram is a part of Facebook’s advertising network after being bought by the social media giant in 2012.

While its targeting features are based on Facebook’s own advertising system; including options such as lookalike audiences, interests, demographics, and location, Instagram’s ads tend to be more interactive with polls, sliders and buttons as well as call to actions that call for users to “swipe up”.

If your brand, services or products are related to fashion and beauty, Instagram is much better than Google’s search ads in letting advertisers get their products in front of buyers. Sign up for Instagram ads by heading over their website today.

Visit Instagram Ads

You may like: How to Boost Online Advertising Success in 2020?

6. LinkedIn Ads

With over 630 million active business professionals looking to collaborate and network, LinkedIn is the ideal platform for B2B advertising.

Give LinkedIn ads a try if previously you had little success with B2B advertising on other platforms. It’s a great platform for getting your product or service right in front and noticed by a company’s important decision-makers. You can also target your prospective users with ease using, among other options, their position or job title, industry, and function.

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Avail of the vast range of ads offered such as in-mail, text, and sponsored content and the varied pricing models (that includes CPM and CPC) & many advanced targeting options. With LinkedIn Ads,  B2B advertising can become more accessible and budget-friendly! Get started with LinkedIn ads by visiting their website.

Visit LinkedIn Ads

7. Outbrain

If your intent is to drive relevant prospects to your blog content with the goal of converting them then you must give Outbrain a try. Outbrain is, in a nutshell, a content discovery platform that helps you reach audiences to engage with your content. Launched in 2006, this platform can be taken advantage of by advertisers to promote their brand, services, and products using content marketing as well as native advertising.

With a huge ad network totaling over 100,000 websites that include big names such as CNN, you’ll see recommendations at the bottom when you read an article or visit these sites. They’re all powered by Outbrain and have a more affordable cost per click.

Outbrain has an up and coming merger with a similar content discovery platform named Taboola. Once the merger will be completed, it will have a colossal network of websites that will reach close to 2 billion monthly visitors. Get started with Outbrain by visiting their website.

Visit Outbrain

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8. Quora

Quora is the Q&A platform of the internet and people visiting the site are looking for useful information by asking questions, getting insightful answers, and sharing them as well. On the platform, you can reach out to customers as they try to evaluate and research products, companies, services, and industries. Advertisers are given an opening to influence prospects while they are still in the consideration phase of their customer journey.

With Quora’s ads, you have the ability of contextual targeting that enables you to target the content found in Quora. There is also behavioral targeting that allows you to target people based on their behaviors. Quora presently has a global audience reach of more than 300 million visitors per month. Sign up for Quora advertising today.

Visit Quora Advertising

9. Reddit Ads

Touted as the “front page of the internet”, Reddit is a global discussion board with over 1 billion visitors a month and is constantly buzzing with discussions on every topic under the sun and is highly popular with the Generation Z & millennial demographics.

Reddit’s ad cost per click is substantially lower. It’s a great platform to reach out to fresh audiences that are often not given attention by other advertisers, enabling you to capture a bigger share of the market. Know more about Reddit ads on their website.

Visit Reddit Ads

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10. Twitter Ads

Famously known for its “tweet” character limit, Twitter was launched in 2006. Twitter is a microblogging website that advertisers can take advantage of for event and hashtag targeting.  One of Twitter’s most popular features is the ability to target using hashtags. With it, you can specifically and accurately target trending topics and niches related to your market. It’s an excellent feature since it allows you to avoid paying for irrelevant clicks. It puts your brand, services, and/or products in front of the right audience.

You can also target your audience’s interests, location, and even their followers. You find plenty of business professionals on Twitter. If you’re involved in the B2B market, you can run Twitter Ads together with LinkedIn Ads for optimal exposure of your brand and services as well as grow your audience and following in social media. Create your Twitter ad account today.

Visit Twitter Ads

You may also like: How to Use Twitter, Facebook & Instagram in Your Online Advertising Campaign?

Final Words

Now we covered the Top 10 Alternatives to Google Ads. You are now armed with the knowledge of plenty more places to grow and diversify your advertising efforts to reach more audiences and prospects, obtain more sales and create more awareness for your products, brand, and services.

Author-Image-Saurabh-PandeyThis article is written by Saurabh Pandey. Saurabh is the founder of Brandveda, a digital marketing institute. He started his entrepreneurial journey instead of working in the corporate sector. His niche lies in lead generation, PPC, social media marketing, and is inclined towards all things digital.

Disclosure: Some of our articles may contain affiliate links; this means each time you make a purchase, we get a small commission. However, the input we produce is reliable; we always handpick and review all information before publishing it on our website. We can ensure you will always get genuine as well as valuable knowledge and resources.

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How Auto-GPT will revolutionize AI chatbots as we know them

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How Auto-GPT will revolutionize AI chatbots as we know them

Artificial intelligence chatbots such as OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT have reached a fever pitch of popularity recently not just for their ability to hold humanlike conversations, but because they can perform knowledge tasks such as research, searches and content generation.

Now there’s a new contender taking social media by storm that extends the capabilities of OpenAI’s offering by automating its abilities even further: Auto-GPT. It’s part of a new class of AI tools called “autonomous AI agents” that take the power of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, the generative AI technologies behind ChatGPT, to approach a task, build on its own knowledge, and connect apps and services to automate tasks and perform actions on the behalf of users.

ChatGPT might seem magical to users for its ability to answer questions and produce content based on user prompts, such as summarizing large documents or generating poems and stories or writing computer code. However, it’s limited in what it can do because it’s capable of doing only one task at a time. During a session with ChatGPT, a user can prompt the AI with only one question at a time and refining those prompts or questions can be a slow and tedious journey.

Auto-GPT, created by game developer Toran Bruce Richards, takes away these limitations by allowing users to give the AI an objective and a set of goals to meet. Then it spawns a bot that acts like a person would, using OpenAI’s GPT model to perform AI prompts in order to approach that goal. Along the way, it learns to refine its prompts and questions in order to get better results with every iteration.

It also has internet connectivity in order to gather additional information from searches. Moreover, it has short- and long-term memory through database connections so that it can keep track of sub-tasks. And it uses GPT-4 to produce content such as text or code when required. Auto-GPT is also capable of challenging itself when a task is incomplete and filling in the gaps by changing its own prompts to get better results.

According to Richards, although current AI chatbots are extremely powerful, their inability to refine their own prompts on the fly and automate tasks is a bottleneck. “This inspiration led me to develop Auto-GPT, which can apply GPT-4’s reasoning to broader, more complex problems that require long-term planning and multiple steps,” he told Vice.

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Auto-GPT is available as open source on GitHub. It requires an application programming interface key from OpenAI to access GPT-4. And to use it, people will need to install Python and a development environment such as Docker or VS Code with a Dev Container extension. As a result, it might take a little bit of technical knowhow to get going, though there’s extensive setup documentation.

How does it work?

In a text interface, Auto-GPT asks the user to give the AI a name, a role, an objective and up to five goals that it should reach. Each of these defines how the AI agents will approach the action the user wants and how it will deliver the final product.

First, the user sets a name for the AI, such as “RestaurantMappingApp-GPT,” and then set a role, such as “Develop a web app that will provide interactive maps for nearby restaurants.” The user can then set a series of goals, such as “Write a back-end in Python” and “Program a front end in HTML,” or “Offer links to menus if available” and “Link to delivery apps.”

Once the user hits enter, Auto-GPT will begin launching agents, which will produce prompts for GPT-4, then approach the original role and each of the different goals. Finally, it will then begin refining and recursing through the different prompts that will allow it to connect to Google Maps using Python or JavaScript.

It does this by breaking the overall job into smaller tasks to work on each, and it uses a primary monitoring AI bot that acts as a “manager” to make sure that they coordinate. This particular prompt asks the bot to build a somewhat complex app that could go awry if it doesn’t keep track of a number of different moving parts, so it might take a large number of steps to get there.

With each step, each AI instance will “narrate” what it’s doing and even criticize itself in order to refine its prompts depending on its approach toward the given goal. Once it reaches a particular goal, each instance will finalize its process and return its answer back to the main management task.

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Trying to get ChatGPT or even the more advanced, subscription-based GPT-4 to do this without supervision would take a large number of manual steps that would have to be attended to by a human being. Auto-GPT does them on its own.

The capabilities of Auto-GPT are beneficial for neophyte developers looking to get ahead in the game, Brandon Jung, vice president of ecosystem at AI-code completion tool provider Tabnine Ltd., told SiliconANGLE.

“One benefit is that it’s a good introduction for those that are new to coding, and it allows for quick prototyping,” Jung said. “For use cases that don’t require exactness or have security concerns, it could speed up the creation process without having to be part of a broader system that includes an expert for review.”

Being able to build apps rapidly, including all the code all at once, from a simple series of text prompts would bring a lot of new templates for code into the hands of developers. Essentially providing them with rapid solutions and foundations to build on. However, they would have to go through a thorough review first before being put into production.

What kind of applications can Auto-GPT be used for?

That’s just one example of Auto-GPT’s capabilities. With its capabilities, it has wide-reaching possibilities that are currently being explored by developers, project managers, AI researchers and anyone else who can download its source code.

“There are numerous examples of people using Auto-GPT to do market research, create business plans, create apps, automate complex tasks in pursuit of a goal, such as planning a meal, identifying recipes and ordering all the ingredients, and even execute transactions on behalf of the user,” Sheldon Monteiro, chief product officer at the digital business transformation firm Publicis Sapient, told SiliconANGLE.

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With its ability to search the internet, Auto-GPT can be tasked with quick market research such as “Find me five gaming keyboards under $200 and list their pros and cons.” With its ability to break a task up into multiple subtasks, the autonomous AI could then rapidly search multiple review sites, produce a market research report and come back with a list of gaming keyboards that come in under that amount and supply their prices as well as information about them.

A Twitter user named MOE created an Auto-GPT bot named “Isabella” that can autonomously analyze market data and outsource to other AIs. It does so by using the AI framework Lang-chain to gather data autonomously and do sentiment analysis on different markets.

Because Auto-GPT has access to the internet, and it can take actions on behalf of the user, it can also install applications. In the case of Twitter user Varun Mayya, who ask the bot to build some software, it discovered that he did not have Node.js installed – an environment that allows JavaScript to be run locally instead of in a web browser. As a result, it searched the internet, discovered a StackOverflow tutorial and installed it for him so it could proceed with building the app.

Auto-GPT isn’t the only autonomous agent AI currently available. Another that has come into vogue is BabyAGI, which was created by Yohei Nakajima, a venture capitalist and artificial intelligence researcher. AGI refers to “artificial general intelligence,” a hypothetical type of AI that would have the ability to perform any intellectual task – but no existing AI is anywhere close. BabyAGI is a Python-based task management system that uses the OpenAI API, like Auto-GPT, that prioritizes and builds new tasks toward an objective.

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There are also AgentGPT and GodMode, which are much more user-friendly in that they use a web interface instead of needing an installation on a computer, so they can be accessed as a service. These services lower the barrier to entry by making it simple for users because they don’t require any technical knowledge to use and will perform similar tasks to Auto-GPT, such as generating code, answering questions and doing research. However, they can’t write documents to the computer or install software.

Autonomous agents are powerful but experimental

These tools do have drawbacks, however, Monteiro warned. The examples on the internet are cherry-picked and paint the technology in a glowing light. For all the successes, there are a lot of issues that can happen when using it.

“It can get stuck in task loops and get confused,” Monteiro said. “And those task loops can get pretty expensive, very fast with the costs of GPT-4 API calls. Even when it does work as intended, it might take a fairly lengthy sequence of reasoning steps, each of which eats up expensive GPT-4 tokens.”

Accessing GPT-4 can cost money that varies depending on how many tokens are used. Tokens are based on words or parts of phrases sent through the chatbot. Charges range from three cents per 1,000 tokens for prompts to six cents per 1,000 tokens for results. That means using Auto-GPT running through a complex project or getting stuck in a loop unattended could end up costing a few dollars.

At the same time, GPT-4 can be prone to errors, known as “hallucinations,” which could spell trouble during the process. It could come up with totally incorrect or erroneous actions or, worse, produce insecure or disastrously bad code when asked to create an application.

“[Auto-GPT] has the ability to execute on previous output, even if it gets something wrong it keeps going on,” said Bern Elliot, a distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner. “It needs strong controls to avoid it going off the rails and keeping on going. I expect misuse without proper guardrails will cause some damaging unexpected and unintended outcomes.”

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The software development side could be equally problematic. Even if Auto-GPT doesn’t make a mistake that causes it to produce broken code, which would cause the software to simply fail, it could create an application riddled with security issues.

“Auto-GPT is not part of a full software development lifecycle — testing, security, et cetera — nor is it integrated into an IDE,” Jung said, warning about the potential issues that could arise from the misuse of the tool. “Abstracting complexity is fine if you are building on a strong foundation. However, these tools are by definition not building strong code and are encouraging bad and insecure code to be pushed into production.”

The future of Auto-GPT and other autonomous agents

Tools such as Auto-GPT, BabyAGI, AgentGPT and GodMode are still experimental, but there are broader implications in how they could be used to replace routine tasks such as vacation planning or shopping, explained Monteiro.

Right now, Microsoft has even developed simple examples of a plugin for Bing Chat. It allows users to ask it to offer them dinner suggestions that will have its AI – which is powered by GPT-4 – will roll up a list of ingredients and then launch Instacart to have them prepared for delivery. Although this is a step in the direction of automation, bots such as Auto-GPT are edging toward a potential future of all-out autonomous behaviors.

A user could ask for Auto-GPT to look through local stores, prepare lists of ingredients, compare prices and quality, set up a shopping cart and even complete orders autonomously. At this experimental point, many users may not be willing to allow the bot to go all the way through with using their credit card and deliver orders all on its own, for fear that it could go haywire and send them several hundred bunches of basil.

A similar future where an AI does this for travel agents using Auto-GPT may not be far away. “Give it your parameters — beach, four-hour max travel, hotel class — and your budget, and it will happily do all the web browsing for you, comparing options in quest of your goal,” said Monteiro. “When it is done, it will present you with its findings, and you can also see how it got there.”

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As these tools begin to mature, they have a real chance of providing a way for people to automate away mundane step-by-step tasks that happen on the internet. That could have some interesting implications, especially in e-commerce.

“How will companies adapt when these agents are browsing sites and eliminating your product from the consideration set before a human even sees the brand?” said Monteiro. “From an e-commerce standpoint, if people start using Auto-GPT tools to buy goods and services online, retailers will have to adapt their customer experience.”

* Image: Freepik

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The Top 10 Benefits of Amazon AWS Lightsail: Why It’s a Great Choice for Businesses

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a popular cloud computing platform that offers a wide range of services to individuals and businesses alike. One of the services offered by AWS is Amazon Lightsail, which is a simplified and user-friendly way to launch and manage virtual private servers (VPS). In this article, we will discuss the benefits of using Amazon Lightsail for your business.

Cost-effective

One of the primary advantages of using Amazon Lightsail is its cost-effectiveness. The service offers a flat monthly fee for each instance, which makes it easy to predict costs and plan for your budget. Moreover, the pricing is transparent, with no hidden costs or surprises.

Lightsail Pricing

User-friendly

Amazon Lightsail is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for even non-technical users to deploy and manage virtual private servers. The platform provides a simplified control panel that includes pre-configured software packages, such as WordPress, LAMP, and more. These packages are preconfigured, making it easy to deploy and set up a web application in minutes.

Scalable

Amazon Lightsail is designed to be scalable, which means you can easily upgrade your resources as your business grows. The platform provides a range of instance sizes to choose from, with varying CPU, RAM, and storage options. You can also scale up or down as needed, making it easy to manage your resources and costs.

Reliable

Amazon Lightsail is built on top of the AWS infrastructure, which means it benefits from AWS’s robust and reliable cloud infrastructure. This ensures that your applications and data are always available and accessible, with minimal downtime.

Secure

Amazon Lightsail provides a secure and reliable environment for your applications and data. The platform includes a range of security features, such as built-in firewalls, DDoS protection, and SSL/TLS encryption. Moreover, Lightsail instances are isolated from each other, which provides an additional layer of security.

Integrated with AWS services

Amazon Lightsail is fully integrated with other AWS services, making it easy to use Lightsail with other AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and more. This integration provides a comprehensive cloud computing platform, enabling you to build and run complex applications.

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Quick and easy deployment

Amazon Lightsail provides a quick and easy way to deploy web applications, with pre-configured templates for popular applications such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more. This makes it easy to deploy a web application in just a few clicks, without the need for technical knowledge.

High-performance

Amazon Lightsail instances are built on top of the latest generation of AWS infrastructure, providing high-performance and low-latency connectivity. This ensures that your applications and data are always accessible and responsive, with fast and efficient data transfer.

Easy to manage

Amazon Lightsail provides a simplified management interface, making it easy to manage your virtual private servers. The platform includes tools for monitoring your instances, configuring backups, managing DNS records, and more. Moreover, the platform provides a range of APIs and CLI tools, making it easy to automate management tasks.

Flexible

Amazon Lightsail is flexible, allowing you to choose the operating system and software stack that best suits your needs. The platform supports a range of operating systems, including Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and more. Moreover, you can install and configure any software stack that you need, giving you complete control over your environment.

In conclusion, Amazon Lightsail is a cost-effective, user-friendly, scalable, reliable, secure, integrated, quick, high-performance, easy-to-manage, and flexible platform for deploying and managing virtual private servers. If you’re looking for a simplified and efficient way to manage your cloud computing resources, Amazon Lightsail is definitely worth considering.

Get started today with Amazon Lightsail

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Binance’s BNB Chain to Offer New Decentralized Storage System

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Binance’s BNB Chain to Offer New Decentralized Storage System

The release of the decentralized storage system’s white paper was having a modest effect on the price of other storage tokens on Wednesday. Filecoin (FIL), storj (STORJ), and arweave (AR) are now trading 2%, 5% and 6%, respectively, above their pre-announcement prices.

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