Camphouse (Mediatool) vs Halliard: Which Media Planning Tool Is Right for You?

If you’ve been searching for a Mediatool alternative — or stumbled onto Camphouse and wondered whether it’s still the same product — you’re not alone. Camphouse rebranded from Mediatool in February 2025, and both the old name and the new one still surface in searches, creating genuine confusion in the market.

This comparison is for media professionals who want a straight answer: what does each platform actually do, who is it really built for, and where does each one fall short? We’ll look at Camphouse and Halliard side by side across the dimensions that matter most to working media teams.

Background: Two Newer Contenders

Camphouse (formerly Mediatool)

Camphouse launched its rebrand in February 2025, retiring the Mediatool name after several years in market. The platform is Swedish-founded and has always oriented around global enterprise brands — think multinational advertisers managing campaigns across dozens of markets simultaneously.

The core promise hasn’t changed much from the Mediatool era: a single source of truth for campaign data, with custom taxonomy, live KPI tracking, and workflow management across large, distributed marketing teams. The rebrand introduced AI Smart Spend Analysis and leaned harder into the enterprise narrative. But the domain change came with an unavoidable cost — years of SEO authority built under mediatool.com didn’t fully transfer, and Camphouse is still rebuilding its search presence on the new domain.

With only 2 reviews on G2 (3.8/5) and 11 on Capterra, the public review record is thin. That’s partly a function of its enterprise customer base — large organizations tend to review less publicly — but it does make independent evaluation harder.

Halliard

Halliard launched more recently and takes the opposite strategic bet: rather than chasing enterprise logos, it’s purpose-built for US independent media agencies — the 20-to-200-person shops managing $10M to $500M+ in annual spend that have historically been underserved by both legacy enterprise tools and lightweight planning spreadsheets.

Halliard was founded by Matthew Jacobs, who brings 15+ years of hands-on media experience across Starcom, Dentsu (SVP Product), Amazon DSP, and Paramount. That background shapes the product meaningfully — it’s built by someone who has actually sat at the planning desk.

The headline differentiator: in December 2025, Halliard executed the first fully autonomous media buy via MCP with PubMatic. This wasn’t a demo or a proof of concept — it was a real transaction, making Halliard the first platform in the industry to achieve true agentic buying.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Where Camphouse Has the Edge

Custom Taxonomy and Campaign Architecture

Camphouse’s defining strength is structural flexibility. Enterprise brands don’t all organize their campaigns the same way — they have regional hierarchies, custom naming conventions, agency-of-record relationships, and internal taxonomies that off-the-shelf tools can’t accommodate. Camphouse was built to handle this complexity. You can define your own campaign structure from the ground up, which makes it genuinely useful for large organizations with entrenched workflows.

Multi-Market Global Campaign Management

If you’re a global brand managing media across 20 countries with different agencies, currencies, and reporting requirements, Camphouse is designed for exactly that. Centralized visibility across markets, live KPI tracking, and a single source of truth for all campaign data — these are the things Camphouse was architected around, and it shows.

AI Smart Spend Analysis

Camphouse introduced AI-powered spend analysis as part of its 2025 positioning. For enterprise teams drowning in data from multiple markets and vendors, automated anomaly detection and spend intelligence is legitimately useful. It’s not as far along the agentic curve as Halliard, but it addresses a real pain point for large teams.

Where Halliard Has the Edge

Cross-Channel Reach and Frequency — A Genuine Differentiator

No competitor in the independent agency space offers what Halliard has built here. A proprietary 10,000-person panel across all 210 DMAs gives planners the ability to model true cross-channel R+F before a dollar is spent. This is the kind of capability that previously required either expensive third-party research partnerships or holding-company infrastructure. Halliard brings it to independent agencies out of the box.

Agentic Buying — Not Just AI-Assisted Planning

The industry talks a lot about AI in media planning. Most of it is UI-level — chatbots, smart suggestions, automated summaries. Halliard went further: in December 2025, the platform executed the first fully autonomous media transaction via MCP, purchasing media through PubMatic without human intervention in the transaction itself. That’s a different category of innovation than AI spend analysis. It signals where media buying is heading, and Halliard is already there.

Free Plan — Real Access, No Friction

For a solo planner or a small team evaluating tools, the ability to start for free without a credit card is meaningful. Camphouse’s pricing opacity — enterprise-only, custom quotes — creates a barrier that many independent agencies won’t bother to cross. Halliard’s free tier gets you into the platform immediately. You can evaluate it against your real workflows before committing to anything.

Built by Media People, for Media People

There’s a difference between software engineers who built a media planning tool and a media professional who built software. Halliard’s founder has sat on both sides — 15+ years in working media roles, building products at Starcom, Dentsu, Amazon DSP, and Paramount. That shows up in the details of how the platform handles real planning problems.

Pricing Transparency

This is a genuine gap between the two platforms. Camphouse does not publish pricing. GetApp has surfaced a figure of approximately $149/user/year as a starting point, but enterprise software pricing at that level is almost always subject to significant customization, volume negotiation, and contract terms that make the published number largely notional.

Halliard is more accessible: there is a free plan for individual planners, with Premium and Enterprise tiers available (pricing on request). The free plan is real — no credit card, no time limit — and it’s designed to let solo planners and small teams evaluate the product genuinely before upgrading.

For an independent agency trying to justify new tooling to a founder or CFO, “free to start” is a materially different conversation than “schedule a demo to find out what it costs.”

The Rebrand Question: Does Camphouse = Mediatool?

Functionally, yes — Camphouse is the evolved version of Mediatool, with a repositioned brand identity and some new AI capabilities layered on. If you used Mediatool before, Camphouse is the continuation of that product.

The rebrand matters for one practical reason: anyone searching for Mediatool alternatives today is likely finding a slightly fragmented landscape where some content references the old brand, some references the new one, and the review record is spread across both identities. Camphouse is still working to consolidate that authority on the new domain.

If Mediatool was on your shortlist before and you want to revisit it, Camphouse is the current form of that product. The enterprise focus and global multi-market orientation are unchanged.

Who Should Choose Camphouse

• Global enterprise brands managing campaigns across multiple countries and regional teams
• Organizations with complex internal taxonomies that require flexible campaign architecture
• Marketing teams that need centralized multi-market visibility and live KPI tracking across many concurrent campaigns
• Brands already embedded in enterprise procurement processes where custom pricing and dedicated support are standard
• Teams where the Mediatool workflow was working and the goal is continuity with updated capabilities

Who Should Choose Halliard

• US independent media agencies (20–200 people) managing $10M–$500M+ in annual spend
• Agencies that need cross-channel R+F modeling without holding-company infrastructure
• Teams that want to be ahead of the curve on agentic media buying — not just AI-assisted planning but actual automated execution
• Individual planners or small teams who want to start for free and evaluate the platform on real work
• Agencies that have been underserved by legacy tools and want something built by someone who has done the job
• Teams that need a full plan-to-proof workflow — from planning through execution through measurement — in one platform

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Camphouse the same as Mediatool? Yes. Mediatool rebranded to Camphouse in February 2025. The core product — campaign workflow management for global enterprise brands — is the same, with updated branding and new AI features added. If you’re looking for a Mediatool alternative, Camphouse is the current version of that product, while tools like Halliard offer a different approach aimed at independent US agencies.

Does Camphouse have a free plan? No. Camphouse is enterprise-priced with custom quotes. There is no published free tier or self-serve trial. Halliard offers a free plan with no credit card required, which is a meaningful differentiator for teams evaluating options.

What makes Halliard different from other Mediatool alternatives? Halliard is the only independent-agency-focused media planning platform with a proprietary cross-channel R+F engine (10,000-person panel, 210 DMAs) and the only platform in the industry to have executed a live autonomous media buy via MCP (with PubMatic, December 2025). Those two capabilities don’t exist together anywhere else at this price point.

Which platform is better for a global brand with multi-market campaigns? Camphouse. It was designed specifically for global enterprise brands managing campaigns across multiple markets, with custom taxonomy and centralized KPI tracking as core features. Halliard is US-focused and not architected for global multi-market management.

How do Camphouse and Halliard compare on AI features? Camphouse offers AI Smart Spend Analysis — automated intelligence on where budget is performing. Halliard offers a Chat-Based AI Assistant for planning workflows plus actual agentic buying capability, where the platform can execute media transactions autonomously. Both are in early stages of AI integration, but Halliard’s agentic transaction is a more significant milestone.

Is Halliard right for a solo media planner? Yes — that’s exactly who the free plan is built for. A solo planner can sign up without a credit card, access the visual timeline planner, AI assistant, and flowcharting tools, and upgrade when the team grows or the workflow demands more.

The Bottom Line

This is a legitimate comparison between two newer contenders, not a David-vs-Goliath story. Both Camphouse and Halliard are earlier-stage products without deep review records — Camphouse because its enterprise customer base reviews publicly less often, Halliard because it’s newer to market.

The real question is fit. Camphouse makes sense if you’re inside a large global organization that needs enterprise-grade taxonomy and multi-market campaign management. Halliard makes sense if you’re running a US independent agency, need cross-channel R+F without a holding-company budget, and want a platform that’s already executing agentic media buys — not just talking about them.

If you’re evaluating Halliard, the easiest path is to try it today at halliardmedia.com/trytoday — no credit card, no commitment.

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