Y Combinator-backed AdGrok has raised $470,000 in angel funding from Chris Sacca, Russ Siegelman, Ben Narasin, TriplePoint Capital and Y Combinator.
Today, the startup, which launched in August 2010, is also announcing the general availability of AdGrok to users. AdGrok’s web-based platform allows small businesses purchase contextual keywords on Google AdWords, without the cost of a SEM agency’s work. The SaaS suggests keyword buys, carries them out, and then collects and displays stats about their performance. AdGrok essentially becomes a business’ interface to AdWords, replacing Google’s platform with a more user-friendly software.
AdGrok’s “GrokBot” will crawl a website looking for product pages. When it finds one, it builds the AdWords campaign structures in order to send traffic to that page, generates keywords for that product, and builds text ads from a template library to accompany the keywords specific to that product.
Grok-O-Matic allows companies to import their entire product catalog on AdWords. And companies can find poor performing keywords or a compelling text ad that everyone likes to click on via Groknoculars.
AdGrok’s platform includes deep analytics, including how much traffic businesses are seeing from a keyword or how a text ad is doing, how much it costs, and how much revenue they’re making. AdGrok’s technology will also evaluate a company’s campaign for ways it can be improved and presents these actionable insights and recommendations to users.
AdGrok also offers an agency-like product called GrokMe, in which a Google Certified Professional will do all the set-up and daily management of a business’ Google AdWords account, and they’ll get a weekly report with their campaign’s performance.
The startup’s founder Antonio Garcia-Martinez says that he wants AdGrok, which faces competition from Clickable, to be the TurboTax of search engine marketing and keyword bidding. AdGrok’s platform has evolved since we its launch, now offering both a self-serve and a agency-like offering and now appeals to both small and large businesses.