.png){kind=logo}
Choosing between Tellius and Improvado depends on whether your team needs AI-driven conversational analytics across all enterprise data sources or a marketing-specific intelligence platform with deep governance, automated transformations, and pre-built marketing data models. Tellius excels at natural language querying, proactive anomaly detection, and root cause investigations across revenue operations, finance, pharma, and CPG datasets. Improvado specializes in extracting, transforming, and governing marketing data from 500+ advertising platforms, CRMs, and analytics tools — delivering clean, analysis-ready datasets into your BI stack or data warehouse.
Improvado vs Tellius: Marketing Intelligence vs Enterprise Analytics AI
Tellius positions itself as an agentic analytics layer for enterprise data teams — you ask questions in natural language, and AI agents investigate, decompose root causes, and deliver finished insights with citations. Improvado is purpose-built for marketing teams and agencies: it handles the entire pipeline from API extraction to transformation, governance, and warehouse delivery, ensuring every campaign, ad set, and keyword maps to a unified schema without manual SQL.
Full disclosure: we're Improvado, and this page is written from our perspective. We've tried to represent Tellius's capabilities accurately — and where we've gotten it wrong, email us and we'll fix it. Our goal is to help you make the right call, even if that's not us.
Feature Comparison: Improvado vs Tellius
Both platforms incorporate AI, but they sit at different points in the data stack. Tellius is an intelligence layer atop your existing warehouse; Improvado replaces manual ETL and delivers governed marketing datasets into that warehouse.
| Capability | Improvado | Tellius |
|---|---|---|
| Platform type | Marketing ETL + transformation + governance + AI Agent | AI analytics intelligence layer (queries warehouse, no extraction) |
| Data connectors | 500+ pre-built (DV360, Trade Desk, TikTok, Shopify); custom builds in 2–4 weeks (SLA) | 30+ connectors (Snowflake, Databricks, Salesforce, Gong, Google Drive) |
| Data transformation | No-code UI + SQL recipes; Marketing Cloud Data Model (MCDM) pre-built; AI-assisted mapping | DataFlow AI (cleansing, enrichment); relies on upstream ETL for ingestion |
| Marketing governance | 250+ pre-built rules; naming conventions sync; pre-launch budget validation | Governed semantic layer for general metrics; no marketing-specific rules |
| AI capabilities | AI Agent for anomaly alerts, campaign recommendations, budget pacing insights | Conversational search, auto root cause analysis, proactive monitoring, AI-generated summaries |
| Natural language BI | Limited — AI Agent answers specific marketing questions; not primary querying interface | Strong — ChatGPT-like interface generates instant charts/tables from questions |
| BI compatibility | Delivers to any tool (Looker, Tableau, Power BI, Sigma); BI-agnostic | Operates inside warehouse; works with existing BI stack |
| Implementation | Dedicated CSM + Professional Services included; 2–6 weeks to first dashboard | RevOps/analytics team deployment; professional services available |
| Pricing model | Tiered plans (Growth/Advanced/Enterprise) based on data volume + connectors | Custom enterprise pricing (not publicly listed) |
| Enterprise compliance | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR certified | Governed models ensure auditability; handles sensitive revenue data |
Where Improvado and Tellius Diverge: Five Key Differences
Feature tables show what each platform does. These five distinctions explain when those features matter — and when they don't.
1. Improvado owns the entire marketing pipeline; Tellius analyzes the data you've already moved
Tellius assumes your data already lives in Snowflake, Databricks, or BigQuery. Its AI agents query that warehouse, decompose anomalies, and deliver insights. If your CRM, ad platforms, and analytics tools aren't yet feeding your warehouse, Tellius won't help you get them there — you'll need Fivetran, Airbyte, or custom scripts to handle extraction.
Improvado replaces that upstream layer entirely. It extracts from 500+ marketing sources (Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, DV360, Shopify, HubSpot, offline CSV imports), transforms the data using pre-built marketing schemas, and loads it into your warehouse or BI tool. One platform handles API calls, rate limiting, historical backfills, schema changes, deduplication, and metric standardization.
The distinction matters for teams without dedicated data engineering. If you're a marketing team at a mid-market B2B company and your data engineering queue is six months deep, Improvado eliminates the dependency. If you're a Fortune 500 with an established data platform team and clean warehouse tables, Tellius layers intelligence on top without replacing infrastructure.
"Improvado helped us gain full control over our marketing data globally. Previously, we couldn't get reports from different locations on time and in the same format, so it took days to standardize them. Today, we can finally build any report we want in minutes due to the vast number of data connectors and rich granularity provided by Improvado."
2. Marketing Data Governance exists in Improvado; Tellius offers general semantic consistency
Tellius provides a governed knowledge layer — business definitions, guardrails, and consistent metric calculations across your data model. If "pipeline coverage" means different things in Salesforce and your financial system, Tellius enforces one definition. It's enterprise-grade governance, but it's not marketing-specific.
Improvado's Marketing Data Governance module was built for the chaos of campaign naming, UTM drift, and budget pacing errors that plague ad operations. It includes 250+ pre-built rules (campaign naming conventions, CPC anomaly detection, duplicate spend flags), syncs corrections back to ad platforms, and validates budgets before campaigns launch. When a Facebook campaign violates your naming taxonomy or a Google Ads keyword bid spikes 300%, Improvado flags it before the budget burns.
Tellius won't audit your campaign names or alert you to a rogue AdWords bid. Its governance applies to high-level KPIs and semantic consistency — not the operational minutiae of paid media management.
“If we don't trust the data, the agency won’t trust the reports and won't give them to the client. They’ll start pulling data manually to Excel and spend a lot of time comparing platform numbers to reports. With Improvado, we now trust the data. If anything is wrong, it’s how someone on the team is viewing it, not the data itself. It’s 99.9% accurate.”
3. Connector breadth and maintenance: 500+ marketing sources vs 30+ enterprise sources
Tellius integrates with 30+ sources — cloud warehouses (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift), CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot), conversation intelligence tools (Gong, Chorus), document repositories (Google Drive, SharePoint), and select financial systems. It's broad enough for RevOps and BI teams analyzing pipeline, forecasting, and deal health.
Improvado maintains 500+ connectors, the majority of which are marketing-specific: DV360, The Trade Desk, TikTok Ads, Snapchat, Reddit Ads, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, NetSuite, and dozens of affiliate networks and niche ad platforms. If your media mix includes programmatic display, influencer tracking, or mobile attribution, Improvado likely has a pre-built connector. When it doesn't, the Professional Services team builds custom connectors in 2–4 weeks under SLA.
Tellius customers often pair it with an ETL tool (Fivetran, Stitch) to feed the warehouse. Improvado customers consolidate both into one platform, eliminating dual vendor management and reducing total cost of ownership.
4. AI for investigation vs AI for marketing operations
Tellius's AI excels at exploratory analysis and root cause decomposition. You ask, "Why did revenue drop 12% in Q4?" and the platform investigates — segmenting by region, product line, sales rep, and deal stage, quantifying the contribution of each driver, and generating a narrative summary with citations. It's built for "why" questions, not operational alerts.
Improvado's AI Agent focuses on marketing operations: anomaly detection (CPCs spiking, conversion rates dropping), campaign recommendations (reallocate budget from underperforming ad sets), and governance alerts (naming violations, duplicate campaigns). It doesn't generate root cause narratives; it flags the issues marketers need to act on today.
Choose Tellius when your analytics team spends days manually segmenting data to answer executive questions. Choose Improvado when your marketing team needs proactive alerts and automated quality checks embedded in the daily workflow.
5. Dedicated customer success vs enterprise analytics deployment
Improvado includes a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) and Professional Services team with every enterprise contract. The CSM handles connector setup, custom schema requests, dashboard design, and ongoing optimization. It's a managed service model — not a self-service product.
Tellius is positioned for RevOps and BI teams who can deploy and manage analytics infrastructure independently. Professional services are available, but the platform expects technical ownership from the customer side. The design philosophy: empower your existing analytics team with better tools, not replace their workflow with a managed service.
If your marketing team lacks SQL expertise or BI development capacity, Improvado's white-glove support removes the bottleneck. If you have a strong analytics function and want AI-powered self-service, Tellius delivers without requiring handholding.
When to Choose Tellius
Tellius is the right platform when these conditions apply:
- Your data already lives in a cloud warehouse. Tellius layers intelligence on top of Snowflake, Databricks, or BigQuery. If you've already solved extraction and transformation with Fivetran, DBT, or Airbyte, Tellius adds conversational AI and proactive monitoring without replacing your stack.
- You need cross-functional analytics, not just marketing. Tellius handles revenue operations (pipeline waterfalls, forecasting, deal health), finance (budget variances, trade promotion ROI), supply chain, and pharma-specific workflows (IQVIA integration). If your use case spans multiple business units, Tellius offers broader flexibility than a marketing-first platform.
- Your team values natural language exploration over pre-built dashboards. If your analysts prefer asking ad-hoc questions ("Show me churn by cohort and region") over maintaining static reports, Tellius's conversational interface reduces dependence on BI developers.
- You have analytics engineering resources in-house. Tellius doesn't replace ETL or data modeling — it enhances what your team already built. If you lack those resources, Tellius leaves a gap; Improvado fills it.
- Proactive root cause investigations matter more than operational alerts. Tellius AI agents decompose "why" questions autonomously. If your team drowns in post-quarter analysis rather than real-time campaign adjustments, that's where Tellius excels.
What Improvado Customers Say
Improvado serves 500+ marketing teams and agencies — from mid-market B2B brands to Fortune 500 enterprises managing multi-regional campaigns. Here's how customers describe the impact:
At Signal Theory, Improvado’s wide range of connectors—including the much-needed GA4—was a game-changer. Improvado also simplified the process of merging data from various sources and solved a major bottleneck that had been too cumbersome in the agency’s previous platform. Read full case study →
“Improvado’s connectors were huge for us in overcoming the limitations of our previous platform. I don't think we would have been able to get as far with data as we are now.”
At Signal Theory, for most clients, the reporting process is now fully automated, taking 30 minutes to an hour at most. For clients with unique data sources requiring manual input, the system is flexible enough to accommodate specific needs without compromising overall efficiency. Read full case study →
“Reports that used to take hours now only take about 30 minutes. We're reporting for significantly more clients, even though it is only being handled by a single person. That's been huge for us.”
These aren't isolated wins. ASUS eliminated 90 hours per week of manual reporting. AdCellerant skipped the engineering backlog entirely by adopting Improvado's pre-built connectors. CV scaled from managing a handful of clients to dozens without adding headcount.
Pricing: Improvado vs Tellius
Pricing structures reflect the fundamental difference in how these platforms are sold and deployed.
Improvado pricing
Improvado uses tiered plans (Growth, Advanced, Enterprise) based on data volume, number of connectors, and feature access. Pricing is outcome-based: you pay for the pipeline complexity you need, not per-user seats. Cost drivers include the number of data sources, monthly data volume processed, and whether you require custom connectors or advanced governance features.
Growth plans start in the mid-four figures annually and suit small marketing teams with 10–20 data sources. Enterprise plans — which include dedicated CSMs, SLA-backed custom connector builds, and white-glove Professional Services — scale into six figures for global marketing operations handling 100+ sources and petabyte-scale monthly ingestion.
Transparent pricing is available on the Improvado pricing page. No hidden fees; what you see in the quote is what you pay.
Tellius pricing
Tellius does not publish pricing publicly. It uses custom enterprise quotes rather than per-user monthly tiers. Customers often deploy Tellius alongside existing BI licenses (Power BI, Tableau) as a targeted intelligence layer, so pricing negotiations factor in deployment scale, number of concurrent users, data volume, and professional services requirements.
Because Tellius layers on top of your existing data stack, total cost of ownership includes the upstream ETL tool (if you're using Fivetran or Stitch), warehouse compute costs (Snowflake/Databricks credits), and BI tool licenses. Improvado consolidates those layers, often reducing overall spend even when the sticker price appears higher.
Total cost of ownership considerations
- Improvado: Single vendor. Predictable monthly cost. No additional ETL subscription, no warehouse compute markup (you bring your own warehouse or use Improvado's managed option), no separate BI tool required if you use Improvado's native dashboards.
- Tellius: Requires upstream ETL (Fivetran starts at $1,000/month for basic connectors; custom connectors add $500–2,000/month each). Warehouse compute (Snowflake credits vary; high-query AI workloads can escalate costs). Existing BI licenses if using Tableau/Power BI alongside Tellius.
- Hidden cost — engineering time: Tellius assumes you can manage DBT transformations, schema changes, and connector maintenance in-house. Improvado includes Professional Services and a dedicated CSM, eliminating that internal resource drag.
Frequently Asked Questions: Improvado vs Tellius
What is the main difference between Improvado and Tellius?
Improvado is a marketing-specific ETL platform that extracts, transforms, governs, and delivers data from 500+ sources into your BI tools or warehouse. Tellius is an AI analytics intelligence layer that sits on top of your existing warehouse (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery) and enables conversational search, automated root cause analysis, and proactive monitoring. Improvado replaces manual ETL; Tellius enhances analysis after ETL is already done.
Can Tellius replace Improvado for marketing analytics?
No. Tellius doesn't extract data from ad platforms or handle marketing-specific transformations. If your Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn data isn't already in your warehouse with clean schemas, Tellius won't get it there. You'd still need Fivetran, Airbyte, or custom scripts to feed the warehouse before Tellius can analyze it. Improvado handles that entire upstream pipeline, plus marketing governance (campaign naming rules, budget validation) that Tellius doesn't provide.
Does Improvado offer natural language querying like Tellius?
Improvado's AI Agent answers specific marketing questions ("Which campaigns exceeded CPA targets this month?") and surfaces anomaly alerts, but it's not a primary natural language BI interface. Tellius excels at conversational exploration — you can ask open-ended questions and iterate through visualizations in real time. If natural language search is a core requirement, Tellius is stronger; if you need governed marketing data delivered to your existing BI tool, Improvado fits better.
Which platform is better for non-technical marketing teams?
Improvado. It's designed for marketers who don't write SQL — no-code transformation recipes, pre-built dashboards, and a dedicated CSM who handles technical setup. Tellius assumes your team can manage semantic models, configure data sources, and interpret AI-generated insights without heavy handholding. If your team lacks analytics engineering support, Improvado removes the dependency entirely.
How long does it take to migrate from Tellius to Improvado?
Migration timelines depend on data source complexity and dashboard requirements, but most Improvado deployments reach first-dashboard delivery in 2–6 weeks. The Professional Services team handles connector setup, transformation mapping, and BI integration. If you're currently using Tellius for marketing analytics and want to consolidate upstream ETL into the same platform, Improvado can run in parallel during migration to avoid reporting gaps.
Can I use Improvado and Tellius together?
Yes. Some enterprises use Improvado to extract and transform marketing data into Snowflake or BigQuery, then use Tellius to analyze that warehouse data alongside sales, finance, and operational datasets. Improvado becomes the marketing data pipeline; Tellius becomes the cross-functional analytics layer. This architecture works when you need both marketing-specific governance and broad conversational AI across business units.
Does Tellius integrate with Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn directly?
Tellius does not offer direct API connectors to ad platforms. Its 30+ integrations focus on cloud warehouses, CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot), conversation tools (Gong), and document repositories. To analyze ad platform data in Tellius, you must first extract it into your warehouse using another ETL tool. Improvado extracts directly from 500+ marketing sources, eliminating that intermediate step.
Which tool has better customer support?
Improvado includes a dedicated Customer Success Manager and Professional Services team with every enterprise contract — it's a managed service model. Tellius provides enterprise support but expects customers to own deployment and ongoing management. If your team needs white-glove assistance, Improvado delivers it as standard; Tellius assumes you have in-house analytics expertise.
Final Verdict: Choose Based on Where Your Data Sits and Who Owns Transformation
Tellius and Improvado solve different problems at different points in the data stack. Tellius assumes your data is already clean, unified, and living in a warehouse — then it adds AI-powered conversational search, proactive monitoring, and root cause decomposition. It's the right choice for enterprises with established data platforms, analytics engineering teams, and cross-functional use cases spanning RevOps, finance, and operations.
Improvado starts earlier in the pipeline. It extracts raw data from 500+ marketing sources, transforms it using pre-built marketing schemas, applies governance rules, and delivers analysis-ready datasets to your BI tool or warehouse. It's built for marketing teams and agencies who need the entire stack — extraction, transformation, governance, and insights — without depending on IT or hiring DBT specialists.
The honest answer: if your warehouse is already populated with clean marketing data and you want AI to help you explore it faster, Tellius makes sense. If you're still exporting CSVs from ad platforms every Monday morning or waiting six months for your data team to build a connector, Improvado eliminates that bottleneck entirely.
FAQ
.png)
