AdRoll has a new president: Toby Gabriner, former CEO of Adap.TV (now AOL/Oath) and an early CEO of [x+1], now owned by Rocket Fuel.
Gabriner, who joined AdRoll as a strategic adviser in October, succeeds longtime president, CMO and founding team member Adam Berke, who will move into a strategic advisory role at AdRoll.
Transitioning from an early to mid-stage company often requires a different “mindset and processes,” and Gabriner was seen as the guy who could get it done.
The 10-year-old company was among the earliest companies to zero in on retargeting technology.
Over the years, AdRoll diversified its business to include new tools like prospecting, email and a data co-op. AdRoll’s total 2016 revenue was $300 million, but it declined to disclose revenue ex-TAC. The company said it’s seeing year-over-year growth entering 2017 and claimed it is profitable.
“It boils down to execution,” Gabriner told AdExchanger. “I feel we’re very fortunate in that there’s a lot of companies in the ad and mar tech space whose foundation is crumbling, and we don’t have that problem.” (Note: AdRoll laid off about 29 out of a total employee base of 500 in December.)
For starters, Gabriner credits AdRoll’s founding team for identifying a customer base early on that was, by and large, underserved by ad tech: SMBs.
AdRoll now has 35,000 customers.
Although the majority of those are mid-market customers, some are larger enterprises – though growing that segment beyond its core sweet spot of SMBs is not a top priority right now for AdRoll, Gabriner said.
Gabriner noted a few key growth areas for AdRoll as he assumes president status.
More upper-funnel solutions are an opportunity, he noted, such as exploring video, as are new data activation opportunities via its data co-op, which AdRoll claims has 300 million unique cross-device IDs.
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AdRoll also will expand services for SMBs, he said.
“We’re looking at how we can better help customers [manage] data through various marketing tech solutions they may have – CRM, email, marketing automation,” Gabriner said. “We’re thinking about how that data can move more easily … through to the media execution layer.”
And the company plans to grow its white-label, platform-as-a-service business where AdRoll develops API-based solutions for vendor partners who want to expand their own SMB offerings.
These clients might include ecommerce platforms or email service providers that may manage the transactional aspects of a customer relationship, but aren’t as versed at driving traffic or new customer acquisition.
Given these growth opportunities, AdRoll hopes to expand intelligently without diluting its core capabilities.
“We’re not trying to stretch ourselves too thin,” Gabriner said.
As for AdRoll’s future in the shadow of competitors like retargeting behemoth Criteo, Gabriner claims his immediate intent is not to come in and get AdRoll sold.
“I think AdRoll is one of the companies in our sector which really has the opportunity to become a $1 billion in revenue-plus, long-term sustainable company,” he said.
“As we all know, along the way, if an acquirer or public market opportunity becomes available, that’s something we’ll consider,” he said, “but right now we’re profitable, and have a bunch of growth vectors in front of us.”
Ryan Joe contributed.
