Tenscores is a web-based application that helps Google Adwords advertisers get cheaper traffic to their websites.
The application focuses on one key aspect of Google Adwords: Quality Score. According to co-founder Christian Thunder, Quality Score has a lot of influence over how much an advertiser pays on each click and Google provides very little information on it. Tenscores helps advertisers get key insights on their Quality Scores and how to improve them, translating into lower costs and higher exposure for their ads.
Tenscores has been in operation for just over a year.
The company was founded by Christian and Chretien Mwizerwa. They met in Belgium in 2003 in Louvain-La-Neuve, a small city built to house the Université Catholique de Louvain, the largest french-speaking University in Belgium. They both wanted to become engineers at the time, until they got bit by the entrepreneurial bug.
NextMontreal: Why did you decide to start Tenscores?
Christian: It’s a long story. The short version is that I needed a Quality Score tracking tool for my line of work and had to get it built.
The long version starts when I came to Canada as an international student. The fees were high and my pockets were empty so I taught myself affiliate marketing using Google Adwords. I became very proficient in it. When my successful offers got pulled down and I lost my source of revenue, I turned to Adwords consulting and helped SMB owners sell their products online. Chretien moved to Canada too, and he got interested in what I was doing. First he did some web design for my clients, which was utterly boring for a programmer of his caliber so naturally when I expressed my need for a Quality Score tracking tool, he was on it in a heartbeat. And Tenscores was born.
NextMontreal: Who is the ideal target customer?
Christian: It is mainly for users who care about how much they spend on Google Adwords. Basically, every Adwords advertiser.
NextMontreal: How much does it cost?
Christian: Between $20 and $100 depending on how many keywords are being tracked.
NextMontreal: How important is Quality Score overall to someone’s success with Google Adwords?
Christian: It’s crucial. The main influence of Quality Score is on costs, but it has far greater ramifications. Advertisers with higher Quality Scores get their ads ranked higher and get more exposure, leading to more traffic at lower costs and more revenue. They also get options that low Quality Score advertisers don’t get like the ability to display clickable phone numbers with their ads, or the ability to display more than one link to their website when an ad is on the top section of Google.
NextMontreal: How much education do you need to do with people regarding Quality Score, so they understand its importance?
Christian: Not much. There’s a lot of documentation around the importance of Quality Score, they just have to know it exists. Where it gets tricky is helping them increase it and that’s the challenge in terms of education. Most people don’t know how it works and there’s a ton of junk about it online that leads people to trying things that don’t work anymore. Many advertisers actually give up on it thinking they can’t have much control over it, which is not true. They just have to know what to do… that’s why Tenscores exists.
NextMontreal: What are some of your top lessons learned so far as entrepreneurs?
Christian: Probably the biggest lesson is to start simple and launch fast. Getting a product in users’ hands is paramount.
NextMontreal: What can we expect in the next few months from TenScores?
Christian: More automation around Quality Score optimization. That’s the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more that we’re working on as well, but we’re not ready to share that information just yet.
