Marketing Cloud Intelligence vs Adverity: A Comparative Analysis
Adverity vs Datorama. So, what are these ETL (extract, transform, load) software applications, exactly? Marketing Cloud Intelligence, formerly Datorama, is an analytics and business intelligence platform that assists marketers in unifying their data across platforms into a single source. Adverity is an automated data integration and visualization platform created with data-driven decision-makers in mind. Note: Decision Foundry leverages both platforms for several of our largest clients.
Architecture
Datorama’s Data Model is based on an entity-relationship model, which emulates the unique relationships that exist between dimensions/entities. Datorama maintains the same relationship within its own database through corresponding entities. Datorama’s well-defined data model makes it very easy to get data from multiple sources and channels and harmonize them into a single source of truth.
Adverity operates on a simpler model wherein data is represented in the same way as it is ingested. Currently, Adverity does not account for the unique relationships between dimensional entities. As a result, combining and harmonizing data in Adverity can be challenging.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Datorama in the category of flexible data architecture.
Data Source Connections
Datorama has a library of marketing APIs, including popular databases, cloud storage platforms, and big data environments. Connecting data sources like social, search, display, video, programmatic, web analytics, CRM, email, and more, is seamless. API connections in Datorama are stable and easy to troubleshoot. Datorama allows you to create custom data connectors and the instructions for doing so are easy to follow. Further, TotalConnect is flexible and gives Datorama a definitive advantage over Adverity.
However, Adverity houses a much larger library of 600+ data connections to all relevant platforms and quickly connects to all marketing and sales performance data with just a few clicks. For this reason, clients sometimes use Adverity’s data lake as a source to pull data into Datorama.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Adverity in the raw number of data connectors.
Data Blending and Harmonization
In Datorama, there are multiple ways to integrate and unify data: data fusion, parent-child, data classification, overarching entities, and VLOOKUP. These functionalities are a key selling point in Datorama.
Adverity has a limited harmonization offering. Any harmonization must be done at the early data retrieval stage itself (with limitations). This is a significant drawback in Adverity. Features like data fusion, parent-child relationship, etc., are not currently available in Adverity. Data Harmonization between various data streams is accomplished through schema mapping. Users can transform data with enrichments and combine data streams through joins.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Datorama for providing flexible methods of blending and harmonizing data
Calculated Metrics and Dimensions
Datorama creates new metrics and dimensions based on formulae with the help of a wide array of built-in functions. It also supports auto-complete functionality, code validation, and testing environment for the same.
Adverity supports calculated measurements and new dimension fields can be added using Enrichments during data processing. However, filtered metrics and calculated dimensions are not supported in Adverity. In addition, for calculated metrics in Adverity, only basic functions are supported, and dimensions cannot be queried in the calculation. Applying rules to post-processed data in Adverity has limitations.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Datorama for supporting calculated metrics and data enrichment.
ETL Capabilities
Datorama transforms uploaded data within the data stream — mapped formulae can parallelly transform data when ingested.
Adverity has restrictions on introducing formulae in the data stream mapping itself. Instead, any transformations are created separately through Python code expressions called “Enrichments” and then applied to the data streams. Enrichments use either inbuilt functions or a custom Python script that can only be written as a single line. There is no separate coding environment or data preview option to test the custom script or look at the transformed data before deploying.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Datorama for stronger ETL capabilities.
Data Visualization
In addition to its widget library, Datorama supports custom widgets with a complete development interface comprised of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding environments.
Adverity has a host of visualization options in its widget library. It also provides Presets, visualization templates where fields can be chosen to build charts in just a few clicks. But there are no options to add custom widgets (CSS/HTML) in Adverity. The widget library has most of the in-built charts that are present in Datorama, with a few exceptions/additions. For example, Adverity has Sankey Chart available which isn’t natively available in Datorama. Widget design and customization opportunities in Adverity are limited compared to Datorama’s more extensive offerings.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage? Push. Adverity wins for surfacing better out of the box widgets, but Datorama’s custom widgets are unmatched, when you understand how Data Canvas can be further exploited without limits.
Media Plan Integration
Datorama has a mature and well-established process using Media Cost Center to handle pacing and IO served data.
Adverity uses the “Plan” element to compare the planned budget, or other campaign metrics, to your campaign’s current real-time data. However, this is still in an experimental stage and cannot be implemented without Adverity’s product support.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Datorama. Datorama dominates the adtech space. Many of the world’s largest media holding companies use Datorama to drive their ad business. Datorama is used by buyers and sellers. There is no comparison.
Product Support
Datorama support process is robust, responsive, and detailed.
Adverity’s support is responsive and typically follows up on tickets in a few hours, which seems on par with that of Datorama, if not a little better.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Adverity. Both platforms remain as responsive as possible, but Datorama has recently put a premium price on support and response times can be challenging.
Training
Datorama has established training, certifications, and a defined learning path. Even if your career isn’t driving around technical mastery of the platform, Salesforce Datorama provides plenty of options fo you
Adverity offers a foundation-level certification, and a well-documented learning path and technical documentation are available.
Adverity vs Datorama: Advantage Datorama. Datorama has an array of supporting communities, user events, advanced certifications, globally positioned SMEs and a world-class, free training platform through Trailblazer.
Pricing
Adverity vs Datorama: Datorama is a premium service with a price to match. While the price is higher, you get what you pay for — with more features and flexibility, Datorama offers more for the money.
Adverity pricing is a fully customized quote, uniquely tailored for the needs and requirements of every client. In our experience, Adverity is comparatively less expensive than Datorama. In fact, from our experience, Adverity is can be three times cheaper than Datorama. Small and mid-sized organizations with less complicated requirements may find Adverity pricing attractive.
Adverity vs Datorama: Push. Pricing all comes down to the kind of output you require.
Data Lake Connectivity
Datoram Data Lake is a new enhancement designed for ingesting raw granular data into the platform. This is considered a “Premium” feature especially useful for keyword level data, event level data, log data, and granular geodata
Adverity has no similar functionality.
Adverity vs Datorama: Datorama. Data Lake is a feature that should be considered an edge use case. This solution will only matter to a smaller number of customers.
Who Takes Top Billing? Adverity vs Datorama?
ETL software is a must for any business juggling complicated data sets. There are many options on the market today and Adverity and Datorama offer compelling solutions. However, regardless of your preference, getting the most out of your data requires an investment. The ultimate Winner? You. The industry offers choice and that’s a very good thing.
