Why use Bionic instead of Advantage’s built-in media planning module? Here are 14 key differences to consider when setting up your agency’s technology stack.
Who is Advantage Software?
Founded in 1977 and acquired by Simpli.fi in 2021, Advantage Software has long been a familiar name in advertising agency management. At its core, Advantage offers an ERP platform that combines accounting and project management. More recently, in 2017, Advantage introduced a module for media planning.
At many agencies, Bionic and Advantage work together through the Bionic <> Advantage integration.
But why would an agency choose Bionic for Agencies for media planning and media buying instead of Advantage’s own module? Bottom line: Advantage lacks tools that are necessary for media planning and media buying workflows.
Advantage vs. Bionic – 14 Key Differences
1. Advantage Was Built for Yesterday
In the fast-moving world of advertising, you have to keep innovating just to keep pace with the industry.
Advantage was built for a bygone era. Advantage was built for traditional advertising with print and broadcast TV and Radio. Advantage is built on technology from last century. One look at the user interface transports you back to the 1990s.
In contrast, Bionic is built for today’s (and tomorrow’s) advertising using modern technology.
2. Advantage Only Supports 6 Media Types 👀
When advertising you want all the options available to you. You can’t be held back because of limitations in your systems.
Advantage only supports 6 media types: Radio, Television, Internet, Out of Home, Newspaper, and Magazine. What about search engine marketing? What about mobile? What about social media? What about CTV? What about podcasts? What about any modern media channel? When using Advantage, you’re stuck trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with new media types or you have to go outside the system (probably an Excel spreadsheet) to create your media plan.
In contrast, Bionic supports every media channel, including all the modern media channels such as search, social. Mobile, CTV, and podcasts. Bionic even supports futuristic media channels like augmented reality, virtual reality, and AI agents. With Bionic, your advertising will never be limited by your software.
3. Advantage is Siloed by Media Type
Modern media plans are omnichannel media plans – an optimal mix of placements across online and offline media channels.
When creating a media plan in Advantage (what they call an “Estimate”), you are limited to only placements within a single media type. When you create a media plan, you first select a media type from their limited set of six media types: Radio, Television, Internet, Out of Home, Newspaper, and Magazine. Then you add placements for only the chosen media type. If you want to add a placement for a different media type, you have to create another media plan.
In contrast, Bionic enables you to create omnichannel media plans. You can have social on line 1, TV on line 2, programmatic on line 3, billboard on line 4, … you get the picture. Bionic does not force you to silo your media plans by channel. You are free to include placements across all media channels to achieve the optimal media mix for your client.
4. Advantage Does Not Itemize Media Costs
In advertising, particularly digital advertising, there are many fees that need to be accounted for, such as ad serving fees, data fees, DSP fees, rich media fees, ad verification fees, brand safety fees, and so on.
With Advantage, there is no way to itemize your advertising fees. You are limited to gross media cost, net media cost, and agency commission. Because you cannot account for other fees, you are forced to lump them all together into net media cost and lose accountability and transparency into the various fees.
In contrast, Bionic enables you to itemize all the media fees, each in their own column in the media plan. And Bionic goes further by automating the calculation of each of these fees. This ensures you always have a complete picture of your spending.
5. Advantage Forces a Rigid Hierarchy
Advertisers have lots of ways to organize their advertising budgets. Here are some examples:
- by profit center
- by product line
- by region
- by other segments
- by a combination of the above
These budget hierarchies have varying levels of depth. Your media planning system needs flexibility to mirror each of your clients’ budget hierarchies.
Advantage forces a rigid three-level hierarchy: Client > Division > Product. This does not work for most advertisers and limits your ability to serve your clients.
In contrast, Bionic enables you to create flexible advertiser hierarchies with any number of levels. With this, you can report to your clients the way they expect.
6. Advantage Lacks Customization
There is no one-size fits all media planning and buying system. As an agency, you may need additional fields to manage your operations. Each of your clients may need custom fields. For example, for clients with proprietary market definitions, they need a market field populated with each of their markets.
Advantage does not allow you to add custom fields. So, any custom reporting needs to be somehow cobbled together outside the system.
In contrast, Bionic enables you to build your own proprietary system (with no code). Bionic gives you a full-fledged media planning and buying platform out of the box. Then, you can build upon this with your own custom fields. You can even private label the platform with your own logo!
7. Advantage Only Handles US Dollars
Many advertisers operate in currencies other than US Dollars. Some advertisers operate across multiple currencies.
With Advantage, you are limited to US Dollars. You cannot create a placement in anything other than US Dollars. This means that you cannot effectively serve clients that work with vendors outside of the United States.
In contrast, with Bionic you can create media plans in any monetary currency. In fact, you can use more than one currency within a media plan. You can have line 1 priced in USD, line 2 priced in EUR, line 3 priced in GPB, and so on. Furthermore, Bionic automatically handles the currency exchanges and enables you to run reports in any currency.
8. Advantage Does Include with a Vendor Database
A fundamental phase of the media planning process is researching advertising vendors.
Since Advantage does not include a vendor database, you are on your own to find vendors and gather information. This is time-consuming, error-prone, and prone to omissions.
In contrast, Bionic includes the most comprehensive vendor database available. It includes a searchable directory of vendors, their advertising offerings, prices, contact information, and more.
9. Advantage Has No RFP Functionality
When you want to go beyond basic research to get custom proposals from vendors, you will employ a Request for Proposal (“RFP”) process.
Advantage does not include RFP functionality. So, again, you are on your own to conduct the RFP process outside the system using email and docs. This wastes hours tracking down vendor information, sending RFPs, sending reminders, gathering proposals, and combining them into a standard format.
In contrast, Bionic automates the entire RFP process through its built-in RFP tool, which saves time and eliminates mistakes.
10. Advantage Has Weak Flowcharts
One of the most important outputs of the media planning process is an advertising flowchart, which presents the media plan in a visual format that is easy to understand.
Advantage has limited flowchart functionality. Therefore, if your client wants a flowchart other than an old-school GRPs by broadcast week, you’ll have to create it manually using Excel or some other tool. This takes hours and is prone to embarrassing calculation errors.
In contrast, Bionic includes built-in flowcharting that automates the creation of flowcharts and ensures that your media plan is always 100% in sync with your media plan. With Bionic, you can include any KPI on your media plan on your flowcharts. You can customize the layouts and export in various formats.
11. Advantage Has No Media Authorization
Before placing insertion orders on behalf of an advertiser, it’s a good practice to get legal authorization to make these buys on their behalf in order to avoid financial and legal liability. This contract is called a Media Authorization (or “Media Buy Authorization” or “Authorization to Buy”).
Advantage does not include Media Authorization capability. It’s limited to a signature line on a basic flowchart with no legal language. Therefore, it’s necessary for you to manually create media authorizations outside the system. Besides wasting time, this opens the door to costly mistakes and miscommunications.
In contrast, Bionic includes built-in customizable Media Authorizations. Since you create a media authorization at the click of a button, you save time and eliminate the risk of errors.
12. Advantage Lacks Pacing and Performance Reporting
With advertising, particularly digital advertising, the job is just getting started when the ads launch. Once the ads start running, you need to monitor the performance of each of your placements against your KPIs and campaign objectives.
Advantage Lacks Pacing and Performance Reporting. Advantage does not pull in actual performance data. Therefore, there’s no way to compare performance against goals. Why bother creating a plan if it is not going to be accountable?
In contrast, Bionic automates the process of pulling in performance data and pacing against budgets, impressions, clicks, conversions, ROAS, and all your other KPIs.
13. Advantage Has Weak Dashboarding
Clients love dashboards. It’s one of the most client-facing deliverables you provide. It has to look good and provide excellent insights.
Advantage has basic built-in dashboarding. However, the dashboarding capabilities are weak. Because Advantage lacks actuals data, you cannot report on actuals nor pacing against plan. Because Advantage lacks customization, you cannot present dashboards the way your client expects. Because Advantage’s dashboards lack many layout features, you cannot present dashboards in exactly the way you want to present them.
In contrast, with Bionic Data Studio, you leverage the full power of Looker and all the data in your Bionic account. This gives you all the data your client expects and full control of the layout. And Bionic supports every other dashboarding tool on the market through its data pipeline.
14. Advantage’s Innovation is Falling Behind
In the fast-paced world of advertising, it’s important that your tools are constantly updated to keep pace with the industry.
With the points mentioned above, it seems that Advantage is not innovating as they were in their early days. They have not kept up with the changes in the industry, particularly with digital advertising. There have not been many product updates the last few years, causing it to fall further behind. As an agency, your clients expect you to stay on the cutting edge. How can you do this if your tools are holding you back.
In contrast, Bionic has a strong innovation track record, with free software updates every month. Bionic enables you to stay on the leading edge of the industry and to impress your clients with your innovation.
Did we miss anything?
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